Chennai: Three persons, one of them a class 11 student, drowned in separate incidents in the city on Sunday. Their bodies washed ashore at different beaches in the city a day later. The police said M. Vignesh (17), a resident of Kellys, had gone to the Marina beach with his friends, all class 11 students of a private school in Chetpet.

While playing in the water, Vignesh got engulfed by a giant wave and was dragged into the sea. After futile searches by the locals and rescue service personnel on Sunday, the boy’s body washed ashore behind Gandhi statue on Monday morning. The Marina police retrieved the body and sent it to the government Royapettah hospital for post-mortem.

In a similar incident, a 19-year-old college student’s body washed ashore in the beach off Neelankarai on Monday. Police investigations revealed that the boy, Naveen, was a native of Tirupur and was an engineering college student.

He had come to the city with his friends and they had gone to take a dip in the sea when the incident took place. His body was also moved to the government Royapettah hospital for post-mortem.

In the third incident that took place at Elliots beach, the body of an elderly woman, whose identity is yet to be ascertained, washed ashore. Police investigations are on in the case.
In 2014, drowning alone accounted for 62 deaths in the city. Of these, 30 took place in the four major beaches of Chennai.