THATTA: Three picnickers, two sisters and another woman related to them, drowned in Keenjhar Lake on Friday when they lost balance on slippery steps leading up to Noori-Jam Tamachi`s tomb and fell back into the lake. One woman was rescued from drowning.

Keenjhar police station SHO Ghulam Qadir Shoro and local sources told Dawn that the family of a labourer, Imam Jan Pathan, arrived at the lake from Dhabeji in the morning and hired a motor boat to visit the tomb of Noori-Jam Tamachi located in the middle of the lake.

As soon as the boat carrying the ill-fated family hit a small projected stone near the mausoleum the women stahed jumping from the boat and hurrying towards the graves, causing a young girl, Parsa, to lose her balance on the slippery steps and fall back into the lake.

Her sister Nazia jumped after her into the water to rescue her but she also drowned trying to save her. Their relative Meena Pathan went into the water behind them and she too met her death, said family sources.

Another woman fell into the water but a boatman managed to rescue her. Other boatmen rushed to the scene and took out the women in unconscious condition. They rushed them to the shore from where they were taken to Makli Civil Hospital, 30 kilometres from the lake, through an ill-equipped ambulance of Sindh Tourism Development Corporation but they died before getting medical help.

The relatives and eyewitnesses said that the women could have been rescued if they had received proper first aid in time.

Picnickers complained that the legendary lake, visited by thousands of people every weekend mostly from Karachi and Hyderabad, lacked proper arrangements for the protection of visitors in the event of a mishap.