Kalna boat capsize toll reaches 19, state govt announces compensation

The death toll in Kalna’s boat capsize incident went up to 19 with some more people still missing. 

The state government has announced to give a compensation of Rs 2 lakh to the next of kin of the victims.

NDRF and the state’s Disaster Management Group (DMG) had initiated the rescue operation early on Sunday morning and they had managed to fish out the body of a 30-year-old woman at around 8 pm on Sunday night. 

Her body was found in the river at a distance of around 500 metres from the spot where the boat had capsized. The search operation was on throughout the night with hundreds of people and the family members of the missing ones waiting anxiously on the river banks. 

The divers had started searching for the bodies one after another during low tide early on Monday morning. Till Monday afternoon, bodies of 19 people including three girls were recovered. Eighteen of them were identified. A 65-yearold woman Taranga Debnath is still missing. 

A senior police officer said the bodies of nine people were recovered from near the transit point at Kalna in Burdwan and the other nine bodies were found on the other side at Shantipur in Nadia.

Apart from a nine-year-old girl, all other victims were from Shantipur in Nadia. The victims include six children of age group from 4 to 13,The victims, whose bodies were recovered from Kalna side, were identified as Suparna Sarkar (30), Bristy Biswas (7), Dilip Biswas (58), Sribas Ghosh (43), Kakali Halder (19), Dilip Nandy (53), Sandhya Rani Mondal (40), Khushi Basak (41) and Sanjit Sarkar (30).  The rest nine were recovered from Shantipur side and they were identified as Ramprasad Biswas (28) Souvik Biswas (4), Chiranjit Ghosh (28) Rina Halder (9), Sonali Biswas (13) Laxmi Barman (6) Kumud Halder (55), Sefali Mondal (60) and Parikhit Roy (9). Roy is the only resident from Kalna among the victims. 

The bodies which were recovered from Burdwan side of the river were taken to Kalna Hospital for post-mortem. The victims’ family members from the other side of the river were found crossing Bhagirathi on motorised boats to reach the hospital to identify their close ones. 

The post-mortem of the bodies those recovered from Shantipur side took place in Ranaghat sub-divisional hospital. Steps were taken to hand over the bodies to the victims’ family members as fast as possible.

A trawler which was carrying around 500 passengers had to return on Sunday morning as the mob from Nirsinghapur Ghat at Shantipur had started pelting stones.PMO sought report from the state government in connection with the boat capsize incident. 

It is learnt that a report has already been sent station that overloading in the boat had led to the incident. 

As per the directions of the state government, carrying capacity (that is the number of people) of each and every boat has to be displayed properly on the vessel, there should be sufficient number of life jackets in a boat, timely inspection by competent authority and most importantly ticketing system to get a count on the number of passengers being ferried in one trip.