A soldier remains missing in the Yamuna river after an Army boat met with an accident during a training exercise at Hathnikund Barrage in Yamunanagar district on Tuesday, police said. According to officials, the motorboat, which had been deployed in the upstream stretch of the barrage as part of a multi-day training and flood-rescue drill, developed a technical fault while operating in the river's strong current and began sinking, prompting the four personnel on board to jump into the water as the vessel went under.

Rohtas Kumar, Station House Officer of Pratap Nagar Police Station in Yamunanagar, said information was received in the evening that Army personnel were carrying out a training drill at the barrage when the boat met with the accident. He said four to five troops were present on the boat at the time, of whom four were swept away by the current; three of them managed to swim to safety, while the fourth soldier could not be located despite efforts to reach him.

According to officials, all four personnel on board were wearing life jackets when they entered the water, but the strong current in the river carried them towards the Western Yamuna Canal, allowing three of the soldiers to cover a considerable distance downstream and eventually reach safety, while the fourth could not be traced by search teams in the immediate aftermath.

A search operation was launched soon after the incident was reported, involving Army personnel, the local police team from Pratap Nagar police station, and State Disaster Response Force teams mobilised from both Yamunanagar and neighbouring districts across the border in Uttar Pradesh. Kumar said authorities had requested officials from the irrigation and water resources department to reduce the flow of water in the Western Yamuna Canal from the Hathnikund barrage in order to aid the ongoing search, and had separately asked the district administration to deploy a team from the National Disaster Response Force to assist in locating the missing soldier.

Army divers were also brought in as part of the coordinated search effort, and the submerged motorboat was subsequently recovered from the river after a prolonged operation involving multiple agencies working through the evening and into the night.

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Hathnikund Barrage, which sits along the Haryana–Himachal Pradesh border, plays a key role in regulating the flow of the Yamuna into the Western Yamuna Canal and is regularly used by the Army for water-borne training exercises given its network of gates, canal off-takes and frequently changing river currents, which make it a suitable, if demanding, site for such drills. At the time of the accident, the river was reported to be carrying a substantial volume of discharge, contributing to the strength of the current that swept the soldiers downstream. The incident occurred during the late afternoon to evening hours, on what local reports described as the final day of the ongoing multi-day exercise being conducted at the barrage as part of the unit's broader training schedule.

The search operation continued well into the night, with rescue teams remaining stationed along the riverbank and canal stretch as authorities pressed on with efforts to locate the missing soldier. Divers and rescue personnel worked through difficult conditions along the Western Yamuna Canal, an area known for its swift currents once water is released from the barrage, which likely complicated the search in the hours immediately following the accident. Officials said the coordinated response between the Army, state police, and disaster response teams from two states reflected the scale of the effort mounted to trace the missing soldier as quickly as possible.

Further official details regarding the incident, including any findings from Army headquarters on the precise cause of the motorboat's mechanical failure and the current status of the search operation, were awaited at the time of this report. Authorities have not yet released the identity of the missing soldier, and it remains unclear whether the search operation has yielded any further developments since it was first launched on Tuesday evening. The incident is likely to prompt a review of safety protocols for water-based training exercises conducted at the barrage, particularly given the strong currents and canal discharge levels that appear to have played a significant role in the accident.

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