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Opinion National Interest PoV 50-Word Edit

ThePrint On Camera Videos In Pictures

Society & Culture Around Town Book Excerpts Vigyapanti The Dating Story

More Judiciary Education YourTurn Work With Us Campus Voice

Goa in Rains tourism campaign now includes bans, lifeguards, FIRs

There have already been 71 drowning cases in Goa this year. The state govt has done what they can be expected to do. But the rest of us have to take on some responsibility.

Ashpak Masali died on camera while scouting for a dramatic video on June 24. The 34-year-old from Karnataka’s Bijapur — a few hours up the highway from Goa — handed his friend a phone and climbed the rocks at one end of Baga, to where the picture would be best. The dark, craggy rocks are slippery on a regular, sunny day, but in the monsoon, they take on an even slicker skin of moss. A giant wave crashed against the rocks, sweeping Masali away.  

According to onlookers, Masali had been drinking. Even though the sea was rough — and his friends told him as much — he went down to the lower shelf anyway, close to the swell, before the wave took him. In the video, you can see Masali struggling to stay above the water for a few minutes, but the strong undercurrent pulls him. His body washed up on the shoreline a few hours later.

Masali was one of 71 people to drown in Goa this year and it’s only July. While he was claimed by the coast, several of the season’s dead were found inland, against backdrops that look like laptop screensavers. Tourists make up a significant number of dead.

At Metawada, on the Dudhsagar River, a few kilometres from the famous waterfall, five students from Vasco Da Gama rode the train up to Collem for a picnic before their college term resumed. Believing the water to be shallow, four of them waded in. Among them, three youngsters—two aged 19 and the other 21—were from the same family. 

The rain-fed river was in spate, but four from the group ventured into deeper waters anyway. The body of one was found floating in the river, while the other three were discovered after a rescue operation. Just days after these deaths, two Karnataka teenage cousins drowned in the same river at Tambdimal, even after their 15-year-old sibling repeatedly reminded them that four young men had died there a week prior. 

This same pattern has repeated several times this year. The last week of June also took Aditya Dilip Kumar Satpati, a 15-year-old student from Belagavi, who was swimming in the plunge pool below the Barazan waterfall at Surla, deep inside the Mhadei Wildlife........

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