Eight persons are feared drowned as a boat they were travelling capsized at the Panchkhero reservoir in Jharkhand’s Koderma district on Sunday.

Besides a young boatmen, nine persons belonging to three families from neighbouring Giridih district who had gone to the reservoir for sight seeing were travelling on the boat when the accident that occurred around 11am.

While boatman Rohit Kumar and Pradip Singh, 40, swam to safety, the fate of the rest eight was not known till filing of this report.

“No one could be rescued and no body retrieved till now,” Koderma deputy commissioner Aditya Ranjan who went to the accident site informed when contacted at 5pm.

A boat from the fisheries department and another local boat were being used for rescue operation, the DC further informed, adding none of those eight occupying the ill-fated boat could be traced till then.

“A team from the NDRF has been requisitioned from Ranchi which is on its way,” Ranjan said, adding the team would be pressed into service soon after their arrival.

Nine persons belonging to three families of Kheto village under Rajdhanwar block of Giridih district had gone to the Panchkhero reservoir, at Giridih-Koderma border about 180km from Ranchi, for sight seeing and were travelling on the boat that capsized in the middle of the reservoir.

While only one among them, Pradip Singh, could swim to safety, rest eight went missing. The boatman who also survived fled the scene.

Though Pradip survived, his two children, Palak Kumari, 14, and Shivam Kumar, 12, went missing.

Among other missing persons were Sitaram Yadav, 40, and his three children — Harshal Kumar, 14, Sejal Kumari, 12, and Chhoti Kumari, 5, besides Rahul Kumar, 16, Amit Kumar Singh, 14, both sons of Praful Singh of the same village.