Six students living at an orphanage drowned while immersing a Ganesh idol in a pond at Pedda Kanjarla village in Sangareddy district on Wednesday evening, after choosing a location that police said was not an authorised immersion point.
The incident occurred around 7 pm while the idol was being immersed, according to the police. The deceased were identified as Siddarth, a Class X student; Narasimha Raju, a second-year BTech student; Sumanth Reddy and Ganesh, both second-year polytechnic students; Uday Kiran, a third-year polytechnic student; and Sham Kumar, a first-year polytechnic student. All six were below 20 years of age.
The students were residents of Siresha Memorial Charitable Trust, which provides shelter to orphaned children. The deceased were from Warangal, Kukatpally and Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh, and police were contacting their relatives.
DCP of the Serilingampally Zone Ch Srinivas said the exact circumstances of the incident were still being investigated. “We are yet to find out how the incident happened as the police were immediately involved in rescue efforts. It looks like the boys slipped and drowned in the water body. We will know the actual cause of death later in the night,” he told the Times of India.
Cyberabad police commissioner M Ramesh Reddy visited the spot and took stock of the situation. Police said rescue efforts began immediately after the incident, while officers continued to examine how the students entered the water and what led to the drownings.
The location of the incident has emerged as a key issue in the police inquiry. An officer said the pond was not a notified Ganesh idol immersion point. At notified immersion locations, the officer said, security arrangements include swimmers who can respond to accidents in the water.
The distinction between notified and non-notified sites places the incident within the wider challenge of managing festival-related public safety across urban and peri-urban areas. Immersion activities can involve large groups, temporary access arrangements and water bodies that may not have the personnel or safety infrastructure available at designated sites. In this case, police have not yet announced whether any organisers or other individuals will be held responsible.
Police registered a case under Section 194 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, which applies to suspicious death, and are investigating the cause of the incident. The inquiry is expected to establish the sequence of events at the pond and the circumstances under which the students were present at the non-notified immersion location.
