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The incident occurred on September 21 when Prasant Dahal, a 38-year-old British national of Nepalese origin residing in Rainham, Kent, dived into Lake Como to assist two companions in difficulty, Il Giorno reported. The newspaper identified the companions as a 46-year-old man and his 15-year-old son, both also of Indian subcontinent heritage and living in Britain. They had been swimming from a motorboat chartered in Dongo and moored about 600 metres offshore near San Siro. The father and son were rescued by a separate vessel and conveyed to hospital with initial symptoms of hypothermia after the alarm was raised by the mother and younger child who stayed aboard.
A coordinated search immediately followed involving multiple agencies, according to coverage in The Mirror and The Sun. Firefighters dispatched divers from Milan supported by the Malpensa Helicopter Unit while remotely operated vehicles began scanning the lake floor. Naval units from Dongo and Como also participated under coast guard direction. Local fire services said, “Operations to prepare and deploy specialised equipment are currently underway. The search will continue tomorrow morning, with the combined use of divers and specialized equipment.”
The location features water depths greater than 250 metres, complicating recovery efforts, Il Giorno noted. No trace of Dahal had been located by the close of the first day’s operations. The father and son received treatment from emergency medical teams at the scene before hospital transfer.
This event echoes a comparable tragedy two months earlier in which a Dutch father disappeared in the same lake during a rescue of his teenage son, NL Times reported in July. That incident near Menaggio likewise involved a rented boat and rapidly changing depths that caught swimmers off guard. Italian rescue teams have grown accustomed to such calls during the peak tourist season.
Lake Como’s popularity with international visitors has been accompanied by periodic safety alerts from regional authorities regarding underwater currents and sudden drops in the lakebed. The current search employed technology including underwater drones to cover the challenging terrain. Updates from the scene indicated that the operation would persist with full resources on September 22.
British authorities were notified and are liaising with Italian counterparts to support Dahal’s relatives, though specific statements from the family were not available. The group had been enjoying a day on the water when the sequence of events unfolded within minutes. Rescue coordinators emphasised the hazardous conditions at the site where the group had anchored.
