High-Tech Sonar Finds No Bodies; Locals Offered Rs 10,000 Cash Reward For Locating Bodies

Rescue agencies Sunday continued their massive operation to search for the missing Hyderabad students and a tour operator by using a high-tech echo sounder device that scanned the Beas riverbed but failed to locate any bodies. Following this, Telangana home minister Nayani Narsimha Reddy on Sunday announced a cash award of Rs. 10,000 and an award certificate to locals to help trace bodies of the missing engineering students from Hyderabad who were washed away in Beas river last week. The Home Minister said that he would be returning to Hyderabad but declared that the search operation will continue until the last body is recovered.

“We deployed side scan sonar to capture pictures of the riverbed to locate the bodies. It showed good images (of the riverbed) but no bodies were traced,” said Jaideep Singh, commanding officer of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF). Almost 10 km of the river stretch from the Pandoh dam to the upstream was scanned using the echo sounder.

In the first four days of the operation, eight bodies were recovered. However, no body has been traced in the next three days.

Meanwhile, after the Telangana Govt announces 5 lakh compensation to families of those lost, The VNR Vignana Jyothi College management has announced that it will return the two-year fee of the deceased students and would also bear education loans, if any, taken by the them in addition to reserving one seat for the students of affected families.