A week after 24 students swept away in Beas river, Mindi, only 8 bodies of Hyderabad students were found till date. In order to locate the bodies of the 16 missing students and one tour operator, the water level in the Beas river was lowered on Saturday morning for the first time but in vain. No bodies could be traced for the second consecutive day Saturday while rescue operations on Friday too turned out to be futile.

In a massive operation, over 550 rescue workers continued their search for the sixth day. Over 50 divers of the NDRF, the Army, the Navy and the ITBP are involved in the search operation. Fifteen divers from Hyderabad also joined in Saturday.The rescuers will Sunday deploy side scan sonar which captures pictures of the riverbed to locate the bodies. It will focus on the 15-km downstream stretch of the river from the Larji hydropower project dam to the Pandoh dam. Official sources said an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), deployed by the NDRF to locate the bodies, couldn’t operate fully due to some flaws in the satellite link.