Eight students drowned off Diveagar beach in Maharashtra’s Raigad district on Thursday, Oct. 1, 2026, after they ventured into the sea and were swept away during a picnic, police said.
The dead were Class XI and Class XII students from Winners Academy, a private coaching institute in Alandi, in Pune district. A police official said the eight misjudged both the depth of the water and the current before being pulled out to sea.
In all, 48 people had traveled to the coast for the outing — 25 boys, 17 girls and six teachers, according to the official. What began as a day at the shore collapsed into a frantic search along the shoreline within minutes.
What Police Said Happened
Search and rescue teams rushed to the spot after receiving an alert and began recovering bodies from the water. One student remained missing for hours. “By the evening, even the missing student’s body was found,” a senior police officer said. Local residents and rescue workers pulled all eight boys from the sea and took them to the primary health center at Borli, where they were declared dead, the officer said.
In a separate case in Palghar district, two teenage friends drowned in the Pinjal River while making reels during the Ganeshotsav school holidays. Three boys from Vivek Nagar in Wada went out on Sept. 16, spending time at Tilseshwar near Wada, along the banks of the Vaitarna River. They stepped out again at about 3 p.m. and were filming around 4 p.m. at Nadipada, near Umrothe village on the Pinjal, when the drowning occurred.
Echoes of the Murud Disaster
Raigad’s coastline has swallowed a busload of students before. On Feb. 1, 2016, 14 students from Pune’s Abeda Inamdar Senior College drowned at Murud beach, about 140 kilometers (90 miles) south of Mumbai. Ten of the victims were girls, and all were aged between 18 and 20. Initial information suggested that 10 students formed a human chain to save four drowning campus mates and were dragged under themselves.
Raigad police said the students were part of a group of 130 on a picnic. College authorities said about 10 staff members, including teachers, had accompanied them. The Navy and the Coast Guard recovered 13 bodies on Feb. 1, 2016, and the body of Madaki Saif Ahmed was found the following morning, Feb. 2, 2016.
“We have sent our trustees and teachers to meet the families who lost their children in the tragic incident,” said P A Inamdar, president of the Maharashtra Cosmopolitan Education Society, which runs the college, Inamdar said. He said the institution would open an inquiry into whether the faculty members who went along on the picnic had been negligent.
Hundreds of relatives and friends gathered at burial grounds and crematoriums across Pune for the last rites. The college declared a holiday on Feb. 2, 2016, to pay homage to the dead, and the Maharashtra government announced compensation of Rs 2 lakh each for the next of kin.
A Question of Beach Safety
The deaths pushed beach safety into court. On Feb. 3, 2016, the Bombay High Court sought a probe into the drowning of the 14 students at Murud-Janjira and asked the state to explain why beach safety rules were not being enforced there. A bench headed by Justice Naresh Patil directed the state to report on conditions at beaches across Raigad district and asked why an existing government resolution on beach safety had not been implemented.
The hearing revived a public interest litigation (PIL) petition filed in 2009 by Bhagwanji Raiyani of Janhit Manch, a nongovernmental organization. The court had earlier ordered civic authorities to ensure the adequate appointment of lifeguards, watch towers and floodlights at night. Advocates Jamshed Mistry and Pradeep Havnur, appearing for the petitioner, pointed to Goa’s beach patrolling unit as a model for Maharashtra and said many of the court’s directions remained unimplemented at most beaches. The bench posted the matter to Feb. 12, 2016.
At Diveagar, all eight bodies have been recovered. Police personnel and local authorities are carrying out further legal and administrative formalities, the official said.
