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Army divers fail to find sunken boat or bodies

Army divers today began a full-scale operation to retrieve the ill-fated boat that capsized in the Brahmaputra yesterday with about 30 people on board.

The team, which began work early on Wednesday morning, made nine dives till noon, but could not trace the boat. Nor was a single body recovered.

According to Major K P Singh of the Jorhat base, visibility at the bottom of the river is almost zero. "It is almost impossible to see anything below the 100-foot-deep waters. Our divers are just trying to find the boat by groping," he said. Major Singh is the commanding officer of the divers.

"We have already dived nine times since 0630 hours, but have not found anything. The riverbed is extremely cold and rocky," he said.

As for chances of recovery of the boat, Major Singh said nothing could be predicted with certainty in such hostile conditions.

Last night, military search boat Trishul had apparently anchored at the ill-fated boat, but in the morning the divers found that the anchor had actually got stuck in a huge rock.

But Major Singh said the search would be carried out as long as there was light. Meanwhile, the Assam river police have started looking for bodies downstream.

According to the police, it will take another couple of hours for the bodies to float after they get completely bloated.

Meanwhile, the list of missing persons has gone down from 19 to 17. Two persons who were listed as missing were reported to be safe later at night.

The authorities are now convinced not more than 30 people died in the accident. "It is more than 24 hours and we only have reports of 17 persons missing. Since entire families came for the chhat puja, the relatives would have contacted the police by now," a senior police officer monitoring the rescue said.

This morning the sub-area commander of the 101 area, Brigadier V B Patil, inspected the rescue operation. District Magistrate D N Saikia is camping at the spot.

UNI

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