The bodies of all four youths who went missing after a boat capsized during Durga idol immersion in Rajasthan’s Kota were recovered from the Kotri canal on Wednesday, around 18 hours after the accident, police said.
Seven people were swept away when the boat overturned around 5.30pm on Tuesday near the Steel Bridge. Three — an unidentified woman, Deepak and boatman Suresh — managed to swim to safety.
The missing youths were identified as Vikas Verma alias Suman (22), cousins Eshu (19) and Rahul (18) Joshi, and Suraj Singh (22). Additional district magistrate Vikas Malhotra said that all four bodies had been recovered.
Teams of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) and State Disaster Response Force (SDRF), assisted by civil defence personnel and local divers, conducted an extensive search operation to retrieve the bodies until around 11.30pm on Tuesday. However, the operation had to be suspended due to darkness, with no trace of the missing youths.
The search resumed at 5.30am on Wednesday. During the initial search, the bodies of Vikas and Suraj were found around 100 metres downstream from the accident site. The teams continued searching different stretches of the canal and subsequently recovered the bodies of Eshu and Rahul a few hours later.
Police shifted the bodies to the Maharao Bhim Singh (MBS) Hospital in Kota for post-mortem examinations. The bodies will be handed over to the families after the procedures are completed in their presence.
Water had been released into the canal on Tuesday, the day of the accident.