The incident happened around 10.30 am on Sunday, while the officials were returning on a hired country-made boat.
The bodies of two forest beat officers who drowned in Pranahitha river near Gudemrevu of Chintamanepalli in Kumram Bheem-Asifbad district of Telangana, have been retrieved after 24 hours.
According to forest officials, Munjam Balakrishna (30) and Bhagawath Suresh Naik (35) were returning from Gadchiroli of Aheri on a country-made boat along with another beat officer Saddam Hussain.
The incident happened around 10.30 am on Sunday. The beat officials, working in Kharjelli range along the Pranahitha river, on suspicion of movement of timber smugglers, traveled to Aheri area by using an under-construction bridge.
The incident happened while they're returning on a hired country-made boat. The boat was travelling with six people, including three officials.
While four of them were able to save themselves by swimming to safety, two of the officials drowned and went missing. Police, forest officials and disaster response teams of both the states along with the NDRF, were engaged in rescue operations for the past 24 hours.
Speaking to TNM, Asifabad District Forest Officer (DFO) Lakshman Ranjit Naik, said, "The incident happened after a regular recce as the country-made boat which they were travelling in, capsized on Sunday around 10.30 am and two officials, Balkrishna and Suresh Naik, drowned."
He added, "This morning, following a joint rescue operation by teams of both the states and National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), the two bodies were retrieved. A postmortem is underway."
The stretch along the Pranahitha river is known for smuggling of teak wood and timber to neighbouring Maharashtra.
Read: A 20-year saga of timber smuggling: How Telangana’s ‘Veerappan’ landed in police net
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