Nine students drown during Ganesha immersion ceremonies in Telangana and Odisha

Nine children and students have drowned in separate accidents in Telangana and Odisha during religious ceremonies to immerse Ganesha idols.

The deadliest incident occurred on Wednesday evening near Hyderabad, where six students from an orphanage drowned in a lake. Hours earlier, three teenage boys died in two separate incidents in Odisha's Ganjam district.

In Telangana, the victims were residents of the Sirisha Memorial Charitable Trust, a care home for orphaned and homeless children in Peddakanjarla village, Sangareddy district. Around 7:00 pm on Wednesday, a group of eight from the home walked to Neredu Cheruvu, a pond about three kilometres away, to perform the Ganesha immersion.

According to local police, the students walked too far into the water. None of them knew how to swim, and they quickly found themselves out of their depth. Though rescuers pulled them from the lake and rushed them to Prachin Global Hospital in Patancheru, doctors declared all six dead.

The home accommodates about 70 boys and young men, ranging from primary school pupils to university students. The victims were identified as Siddharth, a Class 10 pupil; Narasimha Raju, a second-year engineering student; Sumanth Reddy and Ganesh, both second-year polytechnic students; Uday Kiran, a third-year polytechnic student; and Shyam Kumar, a first-year polytechnic student.

Gudem Mahipal Reddy, the local member of the legislative assembly (MLA) for Patancheru, visited the hospital and paid for ambulances to return the students' bodies to their respective families. Two of the victims were from Vijayawada, two from Warangal, and two from Kukatpally. Reddy noted that the trust had been using the same pond for Ganesha immersions for 15 years without incident.

Further east, in Odisha, three more young lives were lost during similar immersion ceremonies on Wednesday.

In Ganjam district, a Class 8 pupil identified as Sitanshu Jena drowned in a village pond in Digapahandi at around 10:00 am. He was taken to a local hospital but was pronounced dead on arrival.

Later that day, two 14-year-old boys drowned in the Ghodahad river, also in Ganjam district. Police identified the two as Adarsh Sahu and Preetam Sameli, both from the Hinjilicut municipality area. Local residents said the boys had joined a group at the river for the immersion ritual when they slipped into deep water. Onlookers managed to pull them out, but they died shortly after reaching a nearby hospital. Police have registered a case and are investigating the circumstances of their deaths.