The death toll in Patna’s boat tragedy rose upto 24 on Sunday morning after four more bodies were recovered by the rescuers. The overcrowded boat carrying over 60 people had capsized in the river Ganga river while coming from the other side of the river on Saturday evening.
The Prime Minister Narendra Modi too has expressed his grief over the accident and announced compensation of Rs 2 lakh for the victim’s family.
According to those survived the boat tragedy, there were over 30,000 people had gathered on the river bank of other side of Patna where the state tourism department had organized a three-day kite festival to mark the Makar Sankranti festival “but there were less number of boats to ferry them to the other side in evening and that led to the commotion on the boat which capsized”.
Some other survivors said “at 3 pm in the evening when there was an announcement that the last boat will set off at 4 pm to ferry people from there, a stampede like situation happened to get a place on the waiting boats”.
The state government has ordered an inquiry into the accident to fix responsibility. Both the team of NDRF and SDRF were launched for the rescue operations but the local fishermen divers, said survivors, rescued more people.
The officials said the accident occurred around 6:30 pm on Saturday evening when an overcrowded boat — which had taken people for a free ride from the other side of the river Ganga was returning from a kite flying festival. The district officials camped at the river bank on Saturday night and launched the rescue operations again on Sunday morning.
Following the mishap the ruling party JD(U) cancelled the lunch they had organized for all the political parties on the occasion of Makar Sankranti.
