Hyderabad: Almost 40 days after a private tourist boat went down in the flooded river of Godavari in Andhra Pradesh, at least five of its passengers are still missing.
The confirmed death toll in the accident near Kachuluru went up to 46 with the recovery of seven more bodies when the ill-fated boat ‘Royal Vashishta’ was salvaged by the team of experts of two private firms. The bodies were stuck in the air-conditioned cabin on the first floor of the ship which was on cruise trip to famous tourist destination Papikondalu in the midst of Godavari.
According to the officials there were 77 people including the crew members aboard when the boat capsized in the flooded river on September 15. While 26 of them were rescued and 46 were confirmed dead, five more people were still missing.
As the news of the recovery of the boat spread, the families of the missing tourists reached the place to identify the recovered bodies. As the bodies were highly decomposed identifying them proved to be heartbreaking exercise.
The bodies were shifted to the mortuary of government hospital in Rajahmahendravaram city. Nookaraju, the driver of the boat was one of the identified bodies. Ravindra and Dharmaraju from Warangal were also identified by their relatives.
Hero’s welcome
Meanwhile, a fisherman-cum — diver Dharmadi Satyam was given a hero’s welcome after he successfully led the operation to salvage the sunken boat. It was a task in which the experts from Indian Navy, Kakinada Port and National Disaster Relief Force had failed.
Though the state government officials had consistently ignored Satyam’s plea to be allowed to retrieve the boat, later they relented and gave the task to Satyam’s Kakinada based company Balaji Marines for Rs2.27 million (Dh119,474). He finally proved himself as a team of 28 workers from two private companies succeeded in wrenching the boat out of the river bringing down the curtains on 40 day long efforts.
