Four women and a child were feared drowned in the river Narmada after the hand-rowed boat that they were travelling in capsized midstream on Thursday morning.
The incident occurred between Bakhari Ghat in Seoni district and Mohgaon Ghat in Mandla district around 7am. THE WEEK correspondent reached the spot of the accident on the Mohgaon side within three hours of the incident and found the families of the missing persons wailing even as rescue boats were conducting searches in the Narmada.
The Superintendent of Police of Mandla, R.R.S. Parihar, confirmed to THE WEEK over the phone that five persons were missing and feared dead. Sarpanch of Sikrosi in Narayanganj block in Seoni, Manmohan Singh, who was present at the Mohgaon Ghat, said that there were 15 persons in the ill-fated boat including the oarsman.
He informed that the persons feared dead were Kalabati Jaisingh (32), Lalbati (30) and Lalbati's son Devraj (8), all from Dagla village in Bijrandi, and Dhaniabai and Buddhobai, both of whom were 50 and hailed from Ghotkheda in Narayanganj. Ten persons including the oarsman and a woman were rescued by another boat.
Shivji (45) of Ghotkheda, who was in the ill-fated boat and saved two children—Sandeep and Santosh—while escaping himself, said that the boat appeared to be overloaded and possibly had a breach from where water started filling up. It suddenly capsized midstream, before anyone could understand what was happening, he recalled. “These two children held on to me and I asked them to keep using their feet and free hand to be afloat. Later, a boat rescued us,” he said.
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“I saved myself somehow, but my daughter-in-law (Kalabati) died,” a wailing Rambati, a resident of Dagla, told THE WEEK.
Manmohan Singh said the initial rescue work was done by two youth—Dassu and Akal Singh of Mohgaon—who were working in nearby fields. The rescue work was continuing till the time this report was filed, with no sign of the missing persons or the boat.
