Seven people are missing after a mechanised boat carrying 29 passengers capsized in the Brahmaputra river after hitting a pillar of the under-construction Dhubri-Phulbari bridge in Assam’s Dhubri district on Thursday.
Officials told The Telegraph around 29 people were on the boat, which sank about 20 feet from the shore at the Aminur char area at 9.30am. However, a local resident said there were over 50 passengers, including children.
“From what we could gather there were around 29 people on board of which five to seven are missing. Five rescued people have been hospitalised while the rest managed to swim to the shore or were pulled out,” an official said.
Among those missing is circle officer Sanju Das who was returning to Dhubri after surveying an erosion-affected area in Aminur char.
Another official said the boat would have reached its destination after 50 metres, but it hit the pillar, which was under water, just after 20 feet of leaving the bank.
“The place of occurrence was quite deep with strong current,” he said.
Personnel of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) and SDRF and BSF with 16 boats were promptly deployed for search and rescue operations. “We will be deploying deep divers and drones for search operations tomorrow,” the official added.
Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said it was a country boat meant for ferrying cargo and an inquiry has been ordered. Dhubri is about 270km from Guwahati.
The mishap has revived memories of the April 2012 Medattari incident in which around 40 people died when their overloaded mechanised boat sank, about 7km from Thursday’s incident site, prompting calls for massive reforms to ensure safety of those using the state’s waterways.
Last year in September, three people died in a ferry mishap in Jorhat district, once again putting the spotlight on the safety measures.
Videos of the mishap show no one was wearing life jackets, which has been made mandatory.
“Since it was not a regular ghat we don’t know the number of passengers or kind of facilities available. It has to be investigated. There are a lot of channels and chars in the area. Everyone has a boat here,” an official said.
A local Dhubri resident Benoy Bhattacharjee said it was not about how many people are missing or dead.
“I was the only person who appeared before the one-commission probing the Medattari boat mishap in 2014. I had only asked one thing: how long will this continue, why is there no regulation?” he told The Telegraph.
Bhattacharjee added: Even today I will ask why regulations are not being implemented in an area where boats are a lifeline. Why people don’t wear life jackets, why boats are not routinely checked and why there is no check on carrying excess people. We need to save lives!”