Nearly 14 hours after a 20-year-old youth fell into the sea and drowned, the Mumbai Fire Brigade on Friday night recovered his body.
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The deceased has been identified as Vignesh Murgesh Devendram and civic officials said that his body was sent to Mumbai’s Cooper hospital. Initially, two persons fell into the sea at Juhu’s silver beach. The first person, Rajkumar Govind Subba (22), was rescued by the local lifeguards before the arrival of fire brigade. Later the authorities launched a rescue operation for the second person.
According to the authorities, the body of Devendram was found approximately 200 metres away from the shoreline.
“The boys were locals of Nehru Nagar, who had possibly come to visit the beach. They had entered into a blind spot and were nearly 400-500 metres away from the on-duty lifeguards when they spotted the two persons drowning,” said an official.
The officials maintained that the rescue operation was temporarily called off after 8 pm on Thursday night following rough sea conditions. However, it resumed an hour later, when the body of the deceased was found.
“During the monsoon, Mumbai experiences rough sea conditions. Therefore, it is difficult to carry out rescue operations at night. Yesterday, the operations were immediately resumed after the tidal conditions improved late during the evening,” said an official.
For the record, at least 20 lifeguards have been deployed at the Juhu Beach, which is among the most-frequented beaches in the city. At Juhu beach, these lifeguards work in two shifts–nine during the morning shift between 7 am and 3pm and 11 in the evening shift.
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During monsoon, the city’s shoreline witnesses a surge and alongside the swell in the sea currents, incidents of drowning also go up. To tackle such cases, Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) and Mumbai Fire Brigade (MFB) have deployed more than 93 lifeguards, provided by a private agency, at six beaches including Girgaon, Dadar, Juhu, Versova, Aksa and Gorai.