Beas tragedy: Childhood friends drown together, families shocked

Hyderabad: They were close friends, grew up together, and studied in the same school and college. Kalluri Sree Harsha and Devashish Bose,  students of VNR Vignan Jyothi Institute  who went missing in the Beas river, were together till a gush of water washed them away.

Grief stricken family members and anxious friends thronged the houses of these two missing students on Monday. Their parents have been inconsolable since they came to know about the  tragedy.

“Harsha called me at around 3 pm saying there were travelling in a bus and were leaving Shimla. When I tried contacting him after hearing about the mishap, his phone was out of reach,” said his father R.K.V. Prasad, a practising advocate. Two of Harsha’s relatives, living in Delhi, have gone to Himachal Pradesh.

Devashish, who did  his Intermediate with Harsha  in Narayana  Junior College, before joining VNR Vignan Jyothi Institute, had put up his Facebook status minutes before the mishap and had tagged eight of his classmates including Harsha.

“Chilling, eating vada pav on the streets of Shimla,” it said. Bose had also uploaded   a few photos of their excursion Devashish’s mother,  Nirmala, last spoke to him on Sunday and he told her they were going to Kulu.

Devashish and Harsha’s houses in Nallakunta are located a couple of kilometres from each other. They grew up together and studied in the same class in most of their schooling years. “They were very close friends and joined VNR College together. Now this tragedy has struck them together. It is still hard to believe what happened,” said a close friend.

Meanwhile, the parents are blaming the college staff for lack of co ordination and co operation. Twenty-year-old B. Mahen Sai Raj, from Dr. A.S Rao Nagar, Secunderabad, had fought with his parents to go on the trip to Mandi.

This was his  first trip with his classmates. Subba Rao, his father, spoke to Sai Raj on Monday morning and his son told him that everything was fine. His father, however blames the bus driver and the faculty for the tragedy. “Why was the second bus allowed to proceed? There was no co-ordination between the buses. The locals knew that the area could be treacherous but no one did anything” he said.

Meanwhile, the parents of Ashish Mantha rushed to Delhi when they heard the news but it was too late. His sister a, resident of Srinivasnagar, in Secunderabad said that Ashish, a movie buff and a fan of Christopher Nolan,  had spoken to his family just the day before. They are critical of the attitude of the college authorities who do not answer the phone nor give them an update. “We get information about our loved ones only through TV channels” said his family members