.png "Four people have drowned in India after trying to take a selfie near a waterfall, authorities say. Pictured above is Kitwad Falls where the accident happened.")
Four people have drowned in India after trying to take a selfie near a waterfall, authorities say. Pictured above is Kitwad Falls where the accident happened.
Screenshot from Belguam Social Network
Four women drowned after trying to take a selfie near a waterfall in India, media reports said.
The accident happened in Kitwad Fallsa tourist attraction located about 300 miles south of Mumbai, India’s most populous city, The Hindu reported.
The women, aged between 17 and 20, were students at a madrassa, a Muslim college in Belagavi, a nearby city, the paper reported.
There were about 40 women from Belagavi went to the waterfall for a picnic On November 26, the Times of India reported.
A smaller group of five people stopped to take photos and selfies closer to the falls when they slipped and fell into the water, the agency said.
One out of five was saved by “local youth”, according to the Hindustan Times, but the other four drowned.
They were taken to a hospital, where doctors declared them dead, the Times of India reported.
According to a 2018 study, selfie-related deaths have become a growing problem in recent years. 259 dead worldwide over a six-year period, well ahead of schedule death from shark attacks.
According to the study, about half of the total reported selfie-related deaths, most of which are due to “drowning, transportation and falls,” occurred in India.
“[S]elfie culture more ubiquitous in India,” University of Sydney anthropologist Jolina Sinanan told the ABC.
