About 100 people went missing when a double-decker passenger vessel sank in the river Meghna, near Shaitnal in Matlab after being caught up in a powerful twister at around 9:30pm Friday night, barely two hours after it had left Dhaka Sadarghat for Rangabali in Patuakhali.
Until around 3:00pm yesterday the body of a two-year-old girl and a woman were recovered from Shaitnal village.
The unidentified woman died after she had swam about half a kilometre from the sinking vessel to the village. Salvage Supervisor of MV Rustam told The Daily Star that it might take another 24 hours before the bodies bloated and floated. There might be some bodies still trapped in the vessel, he said.
The ill-fated vessel MV Salauddin is now lying upsidedown on the bed of the turbulent Meghna about 50 feet below the surface.
Divers from the Bangladesh Navy and the Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Authority (BIWTA) were desper-
ately trying to clear the ship of obstacles such as fishing nets and ropes in which it was tangled.
Navy Commander Shamsul Alam said that they were waiting for the salvage unit MV Hamza to arrive from Barisal so that it could join MV Rustam, present at the site since early Saturday morning, to bring the sunken vessel to the surface.
According to BIWTA officials present at the salvage operation site on the river Meghna, with less than 200 passengers the 318-passenger-capacity MV Salauddin left Dhaka at around 7:30pm and made a stop at Kathpotti near Munshiganj.
Officials said that because it was a Friday and it was the last of the three vessels on the same route, it was not overcrowded. But from Kathpatti, according to witnesses it had picked up at least 70 sacks of rice each weighing about 80 kilograms (2.5 maunds).
As it headed for its next destination, Chandpur, it joined a convoy of three other launches heading for Chandpur.
Just as it reached Shaitnal, about 25 kilometres away from Chandpur, a sudden and violent twister rocked and capsized it within seconds. The two other vessels immediately changed their direction and headed for the shore towards the Shaitnal village about half a kilometre away. MV Salauddin was not lucky.
Shah Alam, who came to look for his sister-in-law, Taslima, 20, missing since Friday, quoted his injured brother, Zillur Rahman, 25, who was in a cabin of the vessel with his wife Taslima.
Shah Alam said that Zillur was in the Narayanganj Hospital with a dislocated collarbone. Alam said that Zillur and Taslima were travelling in the cabin on the top floor of the vessel when suddenly it rocked heavily.
When Zillur opened the cabin door to check, the vessel capsized tossing the newly married couple backward. After that he found himself in the turbulent Meghna clinging to a wooden plunk, with his wife Taslima nowhere to be seen.
But when other survivors snatched the plunk away from him he slowly started to swim in the darkness of the night. He found
several people clinging to an empty oil drum and grabbed its side. Slowly, they swam to the shore at Shaitnal village and survived.
BIWTA officials said that two vessels, travelling in a convoy with MV Salauddin, managed to escape the short-lived twister.
One of the lucky vessels, MV Muladi, soon returned to the spot and threw life buoys into the water picking up 62 passengers, claimed Deputy Director of the BIWTA and Commander of the salvage unit MV Rustam.
Saiful Haque Khan, another Deputy Director of the BIWTA said yesterday afternoon that according to their sources, so far a total of 97 people have survived.
"There are probably many more who went home without letting us know," said Saiful Haque Khan.
Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia yesterday formed a three-member inquiry committee to investigate the accident. The deputy secretary of the shipping ministry will lead the committee.
Another three-member committee was formed to find out why the vessel capsized. The principal officer of the Mercantile Marine Department will head the second committee.