A BRITISH student has died days after swimming in India’s Ganges river on his first trip outside Europe.
Promising filmmaker Sam Banks who saved for a year for the trip collapsed with severe sickness and diarrhea after swimming in the nation’s holiest river, The Sun
By the time an ambulance rushed him to the hospital in New Delhi, the 20-year-old was dead.
Millions of Hindus bathe in the Ganges every year to wash away their sins. But nearly a billion liters of untreated sewage are dumped there each day, along with cremated bodies and industrial chemicals.
The day before he died, vegan Sam – an old boy of posh £27,000-a-year ($71,000) Bedales School -=- learned he was accepted to study film at the London College of Communication.
His mom Louise, 49, said; “We’re devastated. He had such a bright future”.
Sam’s father Graham said: “I understand from friends out there that he had been swimming in the Ganges. He was a fantastic young man, with hundreds of friends, and was so excited about India. He’d been saving up for a year – it was the first time he had been out of Europe.”
An autopsy in India failed to find the cause of death. His body was flown home to Steep in Hampshire, southern England for a second autopsy.
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