Three teenagers who had gone swimming in eastern Bengaluru’s Doddagubbi Lake on Thursday are feared to have drowned, according to police.
Rescue workers have launched a search operation but are yet to taste success. The operations were called off due to darkness and will resume on Friday morning.
Police said Imran Pasha and Mubarak Fazlur Rahman, both 17, and Sahil Suhail Ahmad, 15, all residents of Fatima Layout, Saraipalya, went swimming in the lake around 1 pm.
Imran worked in PVR Cinemas at Elements Mall while Mubarak was a welder by occupation. Sahil was an SSLC student.
Police sources said Imran had gone swimming in the lake just last week and posted a video of the trip to Instagram. The video was well-received. He asked four of his friends — Mubarak, Sahil, Abdur Rahman, 18, and Shahid Mujahid, 17 — if they could join him on another trip to the lake. They all signed up.
Two were not swimmers
Together, the five friends set out for Doddagubbi Lake in an auto from Saraipalya. After reaching the lake, Imran, Mubarak and Sahil decided to swim, while Abdur and Shahid backed out, saying they didn’t know how to swim.
The trio handed their mobile phones to Abdur and Shahid and jumped into the lake all at once around 1 pm. They swam for some time but found it hard to bandy together and began to drown. Abdur and Shahid panicked and screamed for help. Some local residents tried to rescue them but it was too late. The teens just disappeared into the water around 1.45 pm.