Pune: Two drown during immersion of Ganesh idol, one body recovered

Of the four, two people — identified as Datta Aabasaheb Thombre (39) and Prajwal Raghunath Kale (18) — drowned as they could not gauge the depth and flow of the river. Police officials said that according to the locals, the two who drowned could not swim. Till late on Sunday, rescuers from the fire brigade department had recovered Kale’s body while search was on Thombre.

Kiran Gawade, the fire brigade chief of Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation, said, “After receiving information about the incident, we dispatched our team for the search operation. Based on information given by locals, our divers recovered the body of one person while search was on for the other.”

Local police officials have said that immersion of idols on the riverbanks by devotees was prohibited but it was still done at several places, especially where cops are not many in number.