Beas River tragedy survivors blame laxity of safety measures for deaths

Survivors of the Beas River tragedy, which claimed the lives of 24 students earlier this week, have blamed negligence over safety measures for the deaths.

The students, who were from a private engineering college in Hyderabad, had gone missing on Sunday after stopping to take photographs.

The survivors said besides the college authorities, provincial tourism department were also responsible for lack of caution signs at the site.

"Maybe, the college should have been more careful about the do's and don'ts that they are supposed to tell the students before going which we are actually having discussion with the college but I really want to ask the Himachal Tourism Department that where was the sign boards, where were the fences, where was the alarms at the distance of 14 k.m," said Kavya, a survivor.

Meanwhile, two more bodies were recovered on Thursday and were flown to their home towns.

"We have eight bodies till afternoon. Today we have recovered two bodies. All the bodies have been identified. The two bodies that have been recovered today will be flown to their home town Hyderabad through choppers after taking their DNA sample," said Deputy Commissioner of Police, Devesh Kumar.

Rescuers have stepped up search operations for the missing students who were swept away by waters released from a dam while the group was taking photographs at the river bank near Thalot on Manali-Kiratpur Highway in northern Himachal Pradesh

Rescuers, included teams of National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), Indian Army and Armed Border Force, Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) and divers.

Police have already filed negligence cases against the dam officials.

Some of the students survived, managing to swim to safety.

The waters of the river Beas suddenly spiked dangerously high following a release from the reservoir of 126 MW Larji hydropower project. Whether warning signals were sounded before the dam released water is not yet clear.

Those who survived complained of a lack of warning signs.

Officials have launched an investigation to determine the sequence of events, but are presently concentrating on rescue operations to find the rest of the group.