Two teenage rowers, both students of South Point High School, drowned in the Rabindra Sarobar in the middle of a Nor’wester that clocked 90kmph on Saturday evening. '

Police identified them as Pushan Sadhukhan and Souradeep Chatterjee. The school said Pushan was in Class IX and Souradeep in Class X.

The boys were in a boat with five occupants. All the four rowers were from South Point. The fifth occupant was the cox. In rowing, a boat moves backwards, and the cox is the only one who looks in the direction the boat is moving.

The boat overturned around 5.15pm, the police said. At least four other boats are said to have capsized around the same time.

While all the others in all the boats reached the shores safely, some with the help of rescue boats, Pushan and Souradeep were missing. They were fished out of the water by police divers and declared dead at hospital.

Rowers do not wear life jackets because they compromise mobility.

Pushan’s father is a police officer. Souradeep’s father Souvik Chatterjee alleged the school officials had been slow to inform the family about the missing students. “When the school informed us, it was already two hours late. Had we come to know, we could have saved the children. The father of the other child is a police officer. We could have deployed police speed boats just like we have done now,” Chatterjee said.

At 90kmph, the Nor’wester was the strongest in the city since May 18, 2018, with only Cyclone Amphan featuring higher wind speeds in these four years.

It wasn’t immediately clear when the boys, practising for a school regatta, took their boat to the lake. The squall began around 4.15pm but the sky had begun looking ominous at least 15 minutes before that. The maximum wind speed of 90kmph was recorded around 4.29pm.

The Met office had issued a forecast of the impending thunderstorm around 4pm. Within minutes, news channels were flashing it.

A traffic signal uprooted by Saturday’s 90kmph Nor’wester collapses on a WagonR at Hedua crossing in north Calcutta. The occupants of the car escaped unhurt. One of them got off and took this photograph while they were waiting for government agencies to lift the signal post to free their vehicle. The Telegraph Picture

“We don’t have a direct channel of communication with the Met office. But from what I have gathered, the two children entered the lake when the sky was clear,” said Debabrata Dutta, joint secretary of Lake Club from where the boys had launched their practice.

The deaths have raised questions over the safety mechanisms in place at the rowing clubs at the lake, which include the Calcutta Rowing Club and Bengal Rowing Club.
The clubs do not have dedicated life guards but each club has rescue boats. Life guards are deputed during tournaments, insiders said.

During practice sessions in the past, people in charge of the upkeep of the boats, who are “expert swimmers, had rescued rowers from drowning”, a veteran said.
Mayor Firhad Hakim, who visited the spot, said: “Five boats overturned. Everyone managed to swim ashore except these two boys.”

Dutta said: “A rescue boat was deployed immediately after the boats overturned and brought some of the rowers to safety. The others swam ashore on their own.”

An 18-year-old rower from another state, who practises with another club, was also in the water but his boat did not overturn.

“I was some distance from their boat. But it was near the first island (towards Nazrul Mancha). Most of the other boats were closer to the shore. A strong gust of spiralling wind swept the entire area and several boats overturned,” he said.

“Three of the occupants on that (Pushan and Souradeep’s) boat swam to safety. The two others too swam for a while. I then lost sight of them.”

Souradeep, Pushan and their team members were finalists in the cox fours category of the school regatta of the Bengal Rowing Club, which was scheduled for Sunday but has been postponed, a club official said. The category is the most popular one for school tournaments.

Officers at the Rabindra Sarobar police station said a case of unnatural death had been started. “We have not received any complaint till now,” an officer said