Teen drowns while his friends take selfies

A 17-year-old Indian boy has drowned while his friends were standing around taking selfies.

Vishwas G, a student at the National College in Bangalore, India, was on a visit to the Gundanjaneya temple with a group of fellow students. The group decided to go swimming in a nearby pond, reports the news website Metro in the UK.

While his fellow students were taking selfies in the water and smiling away, none of them noticed that Vishwas was drowning right behind them. According to the Metro the students were unaware that Vishwas wasn’t with them when they left the pond.

It was only sometime afterwards that one of the students was swiping through the selfies they’d taken when he noticed Vishwas drowning in the background.

According to the Daily Mail the student alerted the chief of the National Cadet Corps to the picture. By the time they reached the pond, it was already an hour later.

Vishwas’s body was found floating on the water.

The boy’s parents – his father, Govindaraju, a rickshaw driver, and mother, Sunanda – were so grief-stricken by their eldest son’s death that they later sat outside the National College to protest his death, Daily Mail reports.

They blame “negligent” teachers after the boys ignored signs telling them not to enter the water. They also claimed that no faculty member of the National College accompanied the students.

The Daily Mail adds that the school’s management said they will investigate the matter and disciplinary action will be taken against any staff member found to be negligent.

The family also filed a complaint with the police.

Sources: Metro.co.uk, Daily Mail, Daily Hunt