The bodies of all three boys who were drowned while swimming in the Upper Bari Doab Canal (UBDC) near Harsha Chhina village of Amritsar district on Sunday were recovered after an overnight search operation, police said on Monday.
Divers found the bodies of Jaskaran Singh, 13, Krish, 14, and Lovepreet Singh, 16, after the district administration supervised the search operation by Punjab Police and the Border Security Force. A team of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) also joined the rescue efforts.
The body of Jaskaran Singh was the last to be retrieved on Monday morning.
Passers-by had managed to rescue Jashandeep Singh, a 13-year-old friend of the boys.
The children belonged to Tola Nangal village and had accompanied their families to the annual fair at Gurdwara Shaheed Baba Bhag Singh at nearby Sabajpur village from where they had gone to take a bath in the Lahore branch of the UBDC due to the blistering heat on Sunday afternoon.
Lovepreet’s mother Kulwinder Kaur said: “The boys used to take bath in the canal but such an incident has never happened.”
Local residents said the boys partook of langar at the gurdwara before heading to the canal to cool off. However, the rope that they were using in the canal suddenly broke. The canal is around 12 feet deep.