Bodies of missing three boys washed away in River Swarnamukhi retrieved

TIRUPATI

The State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) on Saturday (October 25, 2025) retrieved the bodies of three boys who got washed away in the swirling current of Swarnamukhi river on Friday evening (October 24). The Tirupati rural police and SDRF teams toiled for 24 hours, plunging into the river and braving the heavy rains.

It may be mentioned here that seven boys had gone for swimming in the river to celebrate the birthday of one of them. However, four of them got swept away due to the strong current. The body of one boy Balu (18) was recovered immediately, i.e., on Friday evening.

The department had even deployed drones into service to monitor the areas abutting the river banks to locate the possible survivors, but to no avail.

With a glimmer of hope that the boys might be alive and waiting for help, the SDRF teams continued their search till Saturday evening, only to recover the bodies of the remaining three, identified as Prakash (17), Chinna (15) and Teju (19). The boys were all in a similar age group, some studying SSC and the others having dropped out of Intermediate.

Chandragiri MLA Pulivarthi Venkata Mani Prasad (Nani) and Superintendent of Police L. Subbarayudu were present at the river front monitoring the rescue mission.

Post-mortem was conducted on all the bodies, which were later handed over to the families. It turned out that the parents were not aware of the boys’ outing to the river, which was already in spate. They said that some of them did not know swimming.

Mr. Subbarayudu appealed to the parents to constantly monitor the movement of their children and advise them to stay indoors during such inclement weather conditions. As a precautionary measure, the police and revenue departments have put up barricades at all vulnerable points, especially near reservoirs, irrigation tanks, causeways and culverts.