AGONISING WAIT FOR THE MISSING : Depressed relatives of the hapless victims of Monday’s launch tragedy in the turgid waters of the Padma wail and wait on the river bank for bodies as scores of passengers still remain untraced. sun photo Rescuers signally failed to spot MV Pinak-6 even after a lapse of 35 hours since it capsized with over 200 passengers in Padma River near Mawa ghat in Munshiganj on Monday morning. A chunk of experts apprehended that the launch might have changed its location due to a strong current midstream while others said it may get caught in the river bed. Meanwhile, family members and relatives of the hapless victims of the launch tragedy expressed their grievances due to slow pace in salvage operation as rescuers are yet to locate the vessel till the filing of this report at 10:00pm. Sources said rescue ship Rustom raced to the spot on Monday night while the other vessel ‘Nirvik’ reached the following morning. BIWTC director Mohammad Hossain said rescuers are trying to trace the capsized launch with the help of ‘Eco-sounder’ and side-scan SONAR device. Divers of navy, fire service, coastguard, BIWTA and BIWTC are also conducting a hectic search for the missing, he mentioned. But aggrieved relatives of the missing victims aired their grievances for a slow pace in rescue operation. They blocked Mawa jetty for an hour since 8:30am in protest. Meanwhile, a murder case was filed against six people, including Kalu Miah, owner of the sunken ship. BIWTA Insp Jahangir Bhuiyan filed the case with Louhajang police station in the evening, officer-in-charge Tofazzal Hossain said. 127 PEOPLE MISSING The number of missing people in the launch capsize is 127, the government estimated. However, the number is more than 127 as per unofficial counts. A vessel with SONAR device returned due to bad weather while another coming from Chittagong. Another survey vessel ‘Kandari 2’ was called in to take part in the rescue operation as Jarip-10 of Chittagong Port Authority equipped with powerful SONAR system was called off. BIWTA chairman Md Samsuddoha Khondaker confirmed that Kandari will reach the spot by this noon. SHAJAHAN KHAN’S SPEECH Shipping Minister Shajahan Khan at Mawa said, “Over 150 passengers were on board the launch from Kaorakandi, but it took another 80 to 100 passengers from Kathalbari launch terminal. Of the passengers, 125 are missing while 110 rescued.” “Had the launch come to Mawa directly, it could have avoided the disaster. Overloading of passengers is the main reason behind this tragedy,” he told journalists. The government will take tough measures to prevent people’s lives being jeopardised, Shajahan observed. MINISTER’S THREE NIECES MISSING “Up to 10 people of some families went missing in the mishap. Even three daughters of my maternal cousin were aboard the launch. One was a student of ZH Sikder Medical College, the other a college student and the third studied in her village. They were Sharna, Hira and Lucky,” Shajahan lamented. The body of medical student Hira was recovered on Monday while the rest are still missing. Shajahan said, “I didn’t know about their misfortune at first. My wife told me later.” He also talked to the victims’ relatives who were anxiously waiting on the banks of the river at Mawa and Kaorakandi ferry terminals. OC Tofazzal said the double-decker launch had the capacity of around 150 passengers but it was carrying around 350 people at the time of the accident. RESCUE OPERATION A naval expert said Pinak-6 might have been displaced due to the strong current in the river. Some other experts apprehended that the launch might have been lost in silt. Bharat Chandra Biswas, deputy director of Fire Service and Civil Defence, said a total 59 people, including 14 divers of fire service, are trying to detect the location of the sunken launch. The vessel can be floated due to the strong current. Md Samsuddoha Khondaker, chairman of BIWTA, said, “The launch might have floated towards (Chandpur, Shariatpur) due to strong current in the mid river. Till now, we have searched about 20 square kilometres but failed to spot the sunken launch.” Captain Nazrul Islam of Bangladesh Navy said, “We are working with our SONAR device as BIWTA’s SONAR failed to detect the location of the sunken launch.” “Till now, we have searched two kilometres upstream and five kilometres downstream,” he added. KALU MIAH ON RUN Members of law enforcement agencies failed to nab Kalu Miah, the owner of water vessel Pinak-6. Police, however, continue search for him. A source close to Kalu Miah said he (Kalu Miah) went into hiding from his Mawa residence soon after the launch capsized in the river Padma. The sources also said the documents of the launch do not show Kalu Miah as the owner because he (Kalu Miah) did not update the papers after buying the vessel from one Moniruzzaman. Another sources said the wedding of Kalu Miah’s son Limon that was scheduled to be held on Friday was postponed. 2 BODIES RECOVERED Bodies of two unidentified people were found floating in the river Meghna at Majherchar in Haimchar upazila on Tuesday morning. M Amir Hossain, Chandpur superintendent of police, said local people spotted the two bodies—a man aged around 25-30 and a woman aged around 25—in the river around 9:30am and informed police of it. A police team led by Officer-in-Charge of Haimchar Police Station M Moniruzzaman recovered the bodies and took those to the police station. The SP said the two bodies might be that of the victims of capsized launch ‘Pinak-6’. The bodies of two women have so far been recovered while many people remained missing after the overloaded launch, Pinak-6, from Kawrakandi ghat capsized in the river. Most of people of the launch were returning to Dhaka after celebrating Eid-ul-Fitr at their village homes. The launch sank amid high winds in the choppy water where the depth of the river is around 90 feet. At least 100 are feared dead in the post-Eid accident when people were rushing to their workplaces in the capital. The local administration could not confirm how many people had managed to swim ashore. But locals, who took part in the rescue operation, said 50 to 60 passengers had made it to the shore. About 100 passengers were rescued alive, said Munshiganj Deputy Commissioner Saiful Islam.
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