Four victims of Phillip Island beach tragedy identified

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Members of Melbourne's Indian-Australian community are in mourning, after three of their own, as well as a fourth person visiting from India were identified as the victims of Victoria's worst drowning tragedy in almost 20 years.

Transcript

00:00 This is a terrible tragedy and it's one that's left first responders, a tight-knit

00:06 island community as well as several families reeling. Now the four people who

00:11 died in Wednesday afternoon's tragedy off Phillip Island, that they died, that

00:16 was the worst, the state's worst drowning tragedy in almost two decades since

00:21 2005. Those people have today been identified and three of the four as you

00:25 mentioned were members of Melbourne's Indian Australian community. Their names

00:30 are Kriti Bedi who is 20 years old, just 20, a student, Jagjit Anand who was 23, a

00:35 qualified nurse and his sister Suhani Anand also 20, as well as Reema Sondhi, a

00:41 43 year old woman who was traveling overseas and visiting what we understand

00:45 was family members. These were all members of an extended family group. Now

00:49 police and authorities are still trying to work out exactly what went wrong but

00:53 we know that the family, three of those members live in Clyde in Melbourne

00:57 South East. It's likely that they were holidaying or taking a day trip to

01:00 Phillip Island on Wednesday. Police believe they waded into the water at

01:04 Forest Caves Beach, one of the unpatrolled beaches of the island at

01:08 about 3.30 when they began to get in trouble. They were off-duty lifeguards

01:12 surfing nearby at the time who raised the alarm. They were quickly joined by a

01:16 fleet of emergency service vehicles who did what they could but sadly these

01:20 people couldn't be saved. Three of them died at the scene and a fourth was

01:23 flown to hospital where she has since died as well.

01:28 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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