A picnic gone awry, but help came in the nick of time

It was a case of the holiday picnic gone awry for five teenagers from Bengaluru who decided to go adventurous on Ugadi on Saturday. The footloose five set off on bikes from Peenya in Bengaluru, without informing anyone at home, to Savandurga hill in the taluk. Savandurga is home to a Narasimhaswamy temple.  

They fell into a 150-feet gorge between two parts of the monolithic hill as they jumped off the 2,884-foot Bilikallu-Karikallu hill, while trying to climb it down. The five youths are Ajith, 15, Hemanth, 17, Manju, 14, Nixon, 17 and Sridhar, 18 and Lakshman, 18, a taxi driver.  

As they were climbing up, they noticed a temple, a few kilometres away. One of them saw a narrow opening and thought that this would lead them to the temple through a shorter route.

The police said that all the six then jumped into the opening and as they were walking, they realised that they had lost their way. As it was steep, they could not climb back to the top. They were stuck in a tricky position.

They had fallen into the gorge at around 10 am. Lakshman managed to climb out of the ditch, to a rock at a height of 30 feet from there. While coming down the rock, Lakshman fell down and sustained injuries.

But he succeeded in reaching Savandurga village and informing the residents about the incident. As the cries of the other five grew louder, the residents informed the police and the personnel of the Fire and Emergency services.

The Ramanagar Superintendent of Police Chandragupta directed the DySP Lakshmi Ganesh to begin the rescue operations on Saturday night itself.

A rescue team comprising Praveen, Keerthi Fayaz, Gangadhar, Leo and Sriram from Bengaluru arrived at 11.30 pm. The team first provided water and food to the tired boys. The police kept calling one of them at regular intervals to ensure that they did not move or go to sleep as that would have been disastrous.

Soon, a rope was tied to a nail tethered to the hill, before pulling out the victims one by one using the rope that the victims were asked to tie to their waists.

A senior police officer said, “Fortunately, none of the teenagers was injured. We summoned the parents to Magadi police station after the boys were rescued.”

“The parents, who were not aware about their whereabouts, were shocked to hear the story. The youths and the parents were warned before letting them off,” the officer said.