A vacation to a beach resort in Karnataka's Mangaluru took a tragic turn when three women, all in their early 20s, drowned in the resort's swimming pool today. The entire incident was captured on CCTV.

Nishita MD (21), Parvathi S (20), and Keerthana N (21), all final year engineering students from Mysuru, according to news agency PTI, were vacationing at 'Vazco' beach resort in Mangaluru. They decided to enter the pool despite not knowing how to swim.

They were standing near the shallow edge of the pool, shows the video, before one of them decided to go further in towards the deep side. She suddenly starts struggling to stay afloat when another friend tries to help her but to no avail. The third woman, in a bid to save the other two, also enters the deep side of the pool but starts struggling herself. She appears to try reaching two pool tubes floating near the other edge of the pool but fails. After minutes of flapping their hands and legs to save themselves, they eventually stop.

Their bodies were discovered by the resort staff and police were informed. No lifeguard was present near the pool at the time of the incident, and neither was the depth of the pool mentioned anywhere, said police, according to PTI. Mangaluru Police Commissioner Anupam Agrawal said that all three of them died of "accidental drowning".

Police said that there were security lapses on the resort's part and strict action will be taken.