ISLAMABAD, Sept 26: Three students, including two brothers, drowned in the Rawal Lake on Thursday.

Police said six students of class 10 from the Islamabad Model College for Boys, G-11/1, came to the Rawal Lake after bunking off their classes on Thursday morning. Mohammad Irshad, the duty officer at the Secretariat police station, told Dawn that a boatman informed the police about the drowning of the students.

When the police reached the spot, the boatman along with one of his colleagues had already recovered the bodies.

The victims were identified as Gul Sher, his brother Mohammad Ali, residents of G-9, and Hiskil Ahmed, a resident of I-10.

The boatman, who had informed the police about the incident, told the police that he was rowing his boat when all of a sudden he heard some people screaming. Three students, one of them not in a stable condition, told him that their three friends had slipped into the water and disappeared.

The boatman jumped into the water and searched for the boys but could not find them. Later, he came out and called the police.

In the meantime, one of his colleagues reached the spot and the two boatmen went into the water and found the victims lying at the bottom of the lake.

When the victims were brought out, they were breathless. The boatmen tried to resuscitate them but to no avail.

The friends of the victims told the police that they had reached the lake from the Kinara restaurant side after bunking off their school.

The students were sitting on a hillock at the lakeside when one of them slipped into the water.

The five friends, who could not swim, made a human chain and rescued the friend. But when they were pulling the boy out, the human chain broke down. As a result, three of the students drowned. The police shifted the bodies to hospital from where they were handed over to their families.