At least eight students drowned off Wairi Beach in Maharashtra’s Sindhudurg district on Saturday. They were part of a group of some 50 students of the Maratha Engineering College in Karnataka’s Belagaum. The principal of the college, V Udipi, told ANI that the victims had gone on the trip without the institute’s permission.

“I am going to the site with an ambulance,” Udipi told the news agency.

Local fisherfolk managed to rescue three students, one of whom is in critical condition in a local hospital, IANS reported. The students are believed to have ignored warnings from the locals against venturing out into the sea.

The bodies of the eight students who drowned have been retrieved from the sea.