14 year Boy drowns at Aksa beach

DNA MUMBAI TOP NEWS

MUMBAI, 26th April,2009

Lifeguard holds his hand for a while, but strong current during high tide sweeps him away.

Kartikey Sehgal

A 14-year-old boy from Malwani was feared drowned in the sea at Aksa beach on Sunday afternoon. A BMC lifeguard tried to save him, but the strong waves swept the boy away, the police said. The body is yet to be found, they said.

To the horror of the lifeguards and the police, people were back in the water just five minutes after the incident. The police had to shoo them away.

Supujan Radheshyam Soni, a class VIII dropout, had gone to the beach in Madh Island with two friends, Mohammed Hanif Ansari, 18, and Rakesh Kumar Virchand Nisad, 16. Soni ventured deep into the water during a high tide around 1pm. He got caught in the strong currents and drowned, the police said. His friends got scared and fled, and then informed his parents, Rajanikant S Mashelkar, the seniormost lifeguard at the beach, said.

"I held a hand of his for a few seconds," Siddharth Patil, a lifeguard, said. "But the waves were too strong." He claimed that this was the first drowning in six months at the beach.
Siddharth was downcast after the incident. And even angry. "I had warned them twice not to go into the water. But they did not listen."

The three-kilometre stretch of the beach is patrolled by just three lifeguards at any given time. "I have two swimmers in the morning and three in the evening," Mashelkar said. Aksa beach has no boat for rescue operations.

"It is easy to blame the lifeguards. But see how these people are in the water again," he said, referring to the beach-goers who were in the sea just five minutes after the drowning.
"The lifeguards may be ill-equipped, but a large part of the blame should lay with the people who do not listen to warnings from the police and the lifeguards," a sandwich-seller, who has seen many people drown in the past, said.

"We have requested the BMC to provide more lifeguards at the beach," a police officer from the Malwani police station said.

(Kartikey Sehgal, a DNA reader, was at the spot when the incident happened. He wrote the report and sent the photographs. You can also become DNA's Eyes and Ears by filing such news. Mail your reports to dnacity@dnaindia.net)