DISMANTLING OF VESSEL ON GOVT ORDER DESTROYS VITAL CLUES
By L S Herdenia
The tragic incident of 13 persons drowning after a cruise boat carrying tourists capsized while sailing in the reservoir of a dam on River Narmada in Madhya Pradesh offers a microcosm of what is wrong with our system.
On the afternoon of April 30, the cruise boat, operated by the MP State Tourism Development Corporation (MPSTDC) – an undertaking of the Madhya Pradesh Government – carrying 43 tourists from different parts of the country capsized in the reservoir of the Bargi Dam on River Narmada following a storm. The boat was named ‘Maikal Suta’.
While there were 43 passengers on board, only 29 tickets had been officially issued. This may mean that the remaining 14 passengers were accommodated without buying the official ticket – costing Rs 200 per person – and might have well paid a lesser amount that must have been pocketed by the MPSTDC personnel manning the ticket counter. After the tragedy, police officials used CCTV cameras installed at the boarding point to count the number of tourists entering the boat and discovered that their number was much more than the number of tickets sold.
The cruise was a 20-year-old catamaran hull boat and whether it was maintained regularly is not known. Preliminary enquiry suggests that one of its two engines was operating on reduced capacity.
Be that as it may, once water began entering the cruise and the passengers began panicking, the crew on the boat dashed to the lower deck, where safety jackets were stored, neatly packed in polythene bags with bundles stacked one over another. According to safety protocols, each passenger and all members of the crew should have been wearing safety jackets while onboard. But not a single one actually was. The fact that safety jackets were still packed and stored showed that they had never been used. But for this major security lapse, many lives would have been saved.
According to the survivors, as panic grew, the passengers also helped unpack the life jackets and along with the crew, began distributing them among the passengers. But by then it was too late. Most could not get the safety jackets and those who got them could not manage to wear them properly before the boat capsized, pushing all the passengers into water.
Meanwhile, the man who was driving the boat – instead of trying to save the passengers or do something to prevent the boat from capsizing – jumped into the water and swam to safety.
The Jabalpur District Court in Madhya Pradesh, taking suo motu cognizance of the inappropriate and immoral behaviour of the driver, Mahesh Patel, has ordered registration of an FIR against him. “If an FIR is not registered and an investigation is not conducted into the case, anyone operating a cruise ship or a boat in the future will abandon people to drown in the event of an untoward incident, and this behaviour will likely be repeated,” the court said.
The court order said that in order to prevent such incidents, it is taking suo motu cognisance and ordering the registration of an FIR against the driver and other crew members present on the boat at the time of the incident. ‘The driver of the cruise boat escaped unhurt, leaving the passengers aboard to drown. His failure to make any effort to rescue them constitutes an attempt to commit culpable homicide under sections 106 (causing death by rash or negligent acts) and 110 (attempt to commit culpable homicide) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS)”, it said.
It took three days for divers from the NDRF, SDRF and army – airlifted from Agra – to fish out all the 13 bodies, including one of Marina Massey clutching her four-year-old son Trishaan. They were on a holiday from Delhi.
It has now come to light that neither the boat nor the passengers were insured. This meant that when the disaster struck, passengers and families were left without immediate financial protection. Several other states, including Kerala, provides accident insurance coverage bundled with tickets at eco-tourism centres. It also transpires that the cruise was being operated by a government agency without environmental clearance. Also, the state does not have any Standard Operating Procedures for cruise operations. In other words, a cruise carrying dozens of tourists was operating without any rulebook.
And last but the least, before an investigation into the tragedy, ordered by the state government, could even begin, the cruise was dismantled. This may have destroyed vital clues about the vessel’s design, structure, safety mechanisms and possible maintenance failures.
The state tourism minister said that the boat was not dismantled but was cut open as part of the exercise to find dead bodies.
