Reckless: Three teenagers drown in Rawal Lake

The victims, all students, include two brothers.

ISLAMABAD:

A string of drowning incidents in Rawal Lake over the summer failed to deter a group of six students from venturing in the dam. When one of the boys slipped in the water, three of his friends lost their lives in an attempt to save him in Lakhwal on Thursday.

According to the Secretariat police, the students were sitting on a rock in the lake, when the boy fell in the water. The others held hands and tried to rescue the boy but got trapped in the artificial lake’s water, the police said. Eventually, the boy who had slipped was rescued by people standing nearby but three other students who fell in the water could not be saved, police officials said. Two of them were brothers.

The six students belonged to Islamabad Model College for Boys in Sector G-11 and had gone to the artificial lake for swimming on Thursday morning. According to the police, the students were aged between 12 to 15 years and were students of class 10 and 1st year. The police identified the three deceased as Himzeel Ahmed, a resident of Sector I-10, and the brothers as Muhammad Ali and Gul Sher, residents of CDA Block in Sector G-9.

Rescue officials recovered the bodies of the three students from the lake and took them to the Polyclinic Hospital, the police said. Swimming is banned in the lake for safety reasons, according to city authorities, but young people from Rawalpindi and Islamabad often take the risk of swimming in the lake’s water. The police can arrest people who are seen swimming in the lake but they seldom do.

Warning signs against swimming, if placed, are ignored. This was confirmed by a police official who said even if warning signs are put up boys still do not care. In 2012, three young boys, all from Sector I-10/1, had drowned in the Rawal Lake within a week.

Despite the frequency of drowning incidents, the CDA and the city administration have not made any significant attempts to curb swimming in the lake. The CDA has also faced resistance in banning unsafe commercial boating activities at the Lake View Park in the recent past, after boatmen embroiled the civic agency in a legal battle.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 27^th, 2013.