Shimla, June 9 (IANS) Five bodies of engineering students were retrieved Monday from the Beas river in Himachal Pradesh's Mandi district while search is on for 21 others who were washed away in a flash-flood of water from a hydropower project dam, officials said.
The toll in Sunday's accident could rise as chances of recovering any survivor is bleak, Additional Deputy Commissioner Pankaj Rai told IANS over phone.
Rai said one of the bodies was recovered from Pandoh dam, whose floodgates were closed after the accident. The dam is some 15 km downstream from the accident spot.
There was confusion on the number of bodies being recovered. National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) said in a statement that five bodies have been found, while state authorities said that four bodies were found.
The accident spot is located some 200 km from state capital Shimla and on the border of Kullu and Mandi districts.
"The silent river literally turned into a watery grave within a fraction of seconds," Kiran, one of the survivors and a faculty member of the V.N.R. Vignana Jyothi Institute of Engineering and Technology in Hyderabad, told IANS.
The survivors said they were baffled after the disaster as nobody from the local administration was there to help them out.
Kiran said the students, who were on the way to picturesque tourist resort Manali, were clicking pictures on the bank of the Beas river when the disaster occurred.
At least 24 students, including six girls, of the institute and one tour operator were reported missing.
More than 60 students and faculty members were on an excursion to Manali. Some of them were getting themselves photographed on the bank of the river in Thalaut area near Hanogi Mata temple when the sudden rush of water washed them away.
The river level suddenly increased due to release of water from the hydropower project's dam without warning, eye witnesses said.
Another survivor, Ravi Kumar said: "The water level suddenly rose to five or six feet and the students who were close to the river were washed away."
He said no help came from the district administration for hours.
"If the administration had reacted immediately, 10 to 15 lives could have been saved," an emotional Kumar said.
According to him, there were no hoardings to warn the tourists not to go near the flowing water.
"Before going into the water, we asked the locals and they said you could go. When the disaster occurred, rather than helping us, they started shouting at us," Kumar added.
Aditya, who saved himself, said darkness hampered search operations.
"There was no provision of searchlights. The search operation started almost 12 hours after the incident."
Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh, who visited the spot, ordered an inquiry and suspension of three officials of the hydropower project for negligence in releasing the water from project's dam without forewarning.
"The divisional commissioner of Mandi has been entrusted with the inquiry. We have already suspended three officials of the Larji hydropower project, including the resident engineer," the chief minister told reporters in Shimla.
He said the staff at the Larji project claimed that they had sounded a hooter before releasing water. "The real picture will emerge only after the inquiry report," he added.
Singh said such an incident had occurred first time in the state.
"I believe that the students should also not have gone too near the river flowing in a narrow stretch," he said.
In a report sent to the union home ministry over the incident, the state government explained that the water level in the rivers go higher in summers due to melting of glaciers. The report says that a hooter was blown at 6.15 p.m., before the floodgates were opened by the project staff.
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