JOIN US“I want my child back. No stone should be left unturned,” Aisa Hussain, whose son was swept away in the flooded Beas river in Mandi district, said on Tuesday.
“He should be traced at all cost. If he’s not alive, I want the body of my son back,” Aisa said.
She is among the parents of 19 missing students of the V N R Vignana Jyothi Institute of Engineering and Technology in Hyderabad who have been desperately waiting to hear about their sons and daughters.
One tour operator is also among the missing people. B V Suba Rao, whose son is also in the missing list, said: “I fail to understand how my son, who was a very good swimmer, was swept away.
“In this high-tech world, there are many devices that can be used to locate the people in water. Sadly, they are still relying on the divers to locate the bodies, which is very time consuming and cumbersome process,” he said.
Rao, who is a dam engineer in the Andhra Pradesh government, said the rescue workers of National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) and the army should use high-tech thermal imaging equipment.
Anxious parents of the missing students reached here on Monday night by a special flight.
Most of the parents, who also interacted with NDRF, sought that the 15-km river stretch between the accident spot and the Pandoh dam should be dried up to locate the bodies.
Official sources said the NDRF officials tried to convince them that the bodies might have got stuck in the mud or under boulders on the bed of the river.
“Moreover, it’s virtually impossible to stop the flow of the river. As the glaciers in the river catchment are thawing with the rise in temperature, the water and its speed is increasing. Also the terrain is such that the river flows at a faster speed,” an official told the parents.