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Confusion over death toll in Meghna tragedy

MORSHED ALI KHAN and ABUL KALAM AZAD, Patuakhali
Confusion marks even the official count of dead bodies that were loaded into the MV Rahman for burial.
Yesterday, the Patuakhali district administration said that 177 decomposed bodies were loaded into the launch on instructions from Dhaka and Shaitnal, north Matlab.
As many as 120 bodies were buried at Rangabali, about 80km south of Patuakhali, in the presence of about 4,000 wailing villagers and relatives. And 51 bodies were handed over to relatives, the administration claimed. Nothing is known about the rest.
But the member of parliament from Baufal, Shahidul Islam Talukdar, said an unspecified number of bodies were loaded from two separate mechanised trawlers in Shaitnal. On the way, nobody could count the
bodies aboard because all were piled up and badly decomposed.
Sources said that there might have been a bid to suppress the facts. These correspondents talked to a dozen survivors who unanimously said the vessel on the fateful day was carrying at least 500 passengers.
Ninety-two survivors apart, nobody survived because everything happened within seconds. Even the staff of the vessel, including its master and assistants, drowned. The MV Salahuddin-2 sank into the Meghna River on May 3.
The MV Rahman arrived at Rangabali, the burial site, at around 9.00pm Tuesday, having moved from village to village on its way.
The carrier from the scene of disaster at Shaitnal stopped at 16 villages, hoping that people would come to identify their relatives. Most of the bodies were identified through their wears.Mohammad Abul Khaer, operator of the sole telephone in Rangabali, said the relatives and villagers -- all in a daze -- were waiting until the last of the bodies was buried.
Khaer said officials and volunteers wrapped each decomposed body with white cotton and buried separately in a field near Kachiabunia Bazaar, with people from two unions of Rangabali and Chhoto Baizza watching from afar.
UNB adds: Seventeen more bodies of the victims of the May 3 launch disaster in the Meghna River were recovered from Munshiganj and Chandpur Tuesday midnight and yesterday, raising the death toll to 345.
Of the decomposed bodies, two were recovered from Mohonpur, 10km south of Matlab, one from Char Laggimara and 12 from Char Abdullahpur of Munshiganj district. Another body of a child was recovered from near Shaitnal on Tuesday midnight.
Four bodies recovered from the riverbank at Char Abdullahpur yesterday afternoon by the Navy rescue team were taken to Shaitnal and buried in a mass grave.
The rescue team wanted to bury the decomposed bodies at the same place but could not do so because of administrative difficulty.
Meanwhile, the one-member probe body with ADC Monjur-e-Elahi yesterday initiated its inquiry into the disaster.
The earlier report from Munshiganj quoted the people in char areas as saying that more bodies were floating in the river.
Navy ship BNS Tamjeed still anchored at the place of disaster near Shaitnal sent a team with the backup of police by speedboat downstream in search of floating bodies.