They Were Trying to Take a Selfie, but 4 Ended Up Dead

A newly married woman and three teenage members of her family drowned in a reservoir in India while trying to take a selfie, authorities said.

Newlywed V. Nivedha, 20, and her husband, 24-year-old G. Perumalsamy, were visiting relatives along with his sister one month after their wedding, The Hindu Times reported.

The couple were visiting relatives near Pambar dam in Tamil Nadu when they chose to take a picture holding hands while standing in waist-high water.

The groom managed to pull his sister to safety, but the other four disappeared under the water.

Santosh then slipped and dragged his relatives down with him as he fell.

"They wanted to take a selfie at this spot on the dam and they slipped", S. Prabhakar, a senior police official from the district of Krishnagiri, told CNN. "The water level increased while they were there". Police said the bodies were later recovered and that post-mortem examinations would be carried out.

This tragic outing is the latest of a series of selfie-related incidents in the country.

They found that the most selfie deaths occurred in India, followed by Russian Federation, the United States and Pakistan. Leaping out of the path of an approaching train, they were killed by a train coming in the other direction.

In 2017 three students taking selfies on a railway bridge in the southern state of Karnataka were killed after being hit by an express train.

India accounted for around half of the 259 selfie fatalities reported from October 2011 to November 2017, according to a study by researchers associated with the All India Institute of Medical Sciences past year, whose findings were published in the Journal of Family Medicine and Primary Care. Most of the victims, around 72 per cent, were men under the age of 30. Some cities like Mumbai have started putting "no-selfie zone" signage up, as a warning to the country's 300 million smartphone users.