Six students drown during Ganesh idol immersion in Sangareddy district

Six students died after they accidentally fell into a pond while immersing a Ganesh idol near Peddakanjarla village in Sangareddy district on Wednesday evening.

The group of eight had gone to the pond, about three kilometres from their orphanage on the outskirts of the village, for the immersion ritual around 7 p.m.

The deceased were identified as Siddharth, a Class X student; Narasimha Raju, a second-year B.Tech student; Sumanth Reddy and Ganesh, both second-year polytechnic students; Uday Kiran, a third-year polytechnic student; and Shyam Kumar, also known as Shyam, a first-year polytechnic student.

They were rushed to Prachin Global Hospital in Patancheru, where doctors declared them dead.

All six were residents of the Sirisha Memorial Charitable Trust, a care home for homeless and orphaned children at Shivanagar Crossroads in Peddakanjarla. The trust houses around 70 students, from Class I through polytechnic and B.Tech courses, and admits only orphans.

Patancheru MLA Gudem Mahipal Reddy visited the hospital and instructed officials to complete the post-mortem by 10 a.m. on Thursday and to arrange ambulances to carry the bodies to the victims' hometowns. The MLA said he had arranged the ambulances using his own funds.

Two of the deceased were from Vijayawada, two from Warangal and two from Kukatpally, the MLA said. He added that the trust had been holding its Ganesh immersion at the same spot for the past 15 years.