Newlywed bride and three family members drown after trying to take selfie in front of dam
A newlywed bride and three family members have drowned after trying to take a selfie together at a dam and slipping into the water.
A newly married woman and three members of her family have tragically died in horrific circumstances after they tried to take a selfie in front of a dam.
The 20-year-old bride, identified as V. Nivedha, and her husband G. Perumalsamy, 24, were visiting family in Uthangarai, India, in the in the month following their wedding.
Seeking a photo opportunity together, the young bride stood alongside her husband’s siblings in waist-deep water near the Pambar Dam for a family selfie.
But within moments, the youngest of the group — a 14-year-old boy named Santosh — slipped and dragged his sisters Sneha, 18, and Kanniga, 19, as well as the newly married woman and the groom’s sister into the water.
Mr Perumalsamy survived and managed to save his 15-year-old sister Yuvarani from the water, but the other four disappeared under the water.
According to CNN, the bodies were recovered shortly after the fall.
“They wanted to take a selfie at this spot on the dam and they slipped,” S Prabhakar, a senior police official from the district of Krishnagiri said in an interview.
“The water level increased while they were there.”
The deaths follow a string of tragedies in India, which has recorded the highest number of selfie deaths compared with any other country in the world.
According to a study published in India’s Journal of Family Medicine and Primary Care, around 259 people worldwide have died while taking selfies from October 2011 to November 2017. Most of the victims were men and under the age of 30, with India having the most selfie-related deaths followed by Russia, the US and Pakistan.
The incident near Pambar Dam follows another horror selfie death earlier this year. In May, three teenagers who tried to snap a photo on a railway track in Haryana state died after jumping out of the way of an oncoming train only to be hit by another passing carriage.
In 2017, The Hindustan Times reported a man was trampled to death by a wild elephant as he tried to take a selfie with the animal in the state of Odisha. It prompted the state of Karnataka to launch a campaign on the danger of taking selfie photographs and how doing so can put your life at risk.
Lead author of the study, Agam Bansal, said people were risking their lives to impress their friends and family on social media.
“The selfie deaths have become a major public health problem,” he told The Washington Post.
Mr Bansal said he was concerned about how many of the selfie-related deaths involved young people. The study found that more than 85 per cent of the victims were between the ages of 10 and 30, he said.
He also noted that although the act of taking a selfie isn’t dangerous, it becomes so when people take risks to get the perfect shot.
“If you’re just standing, simply taking it with a celebrity or something, that’s not harmful. But if that selfie is accompanied with risky behaviour then that’s what makes the selfies dangerous,” he said.