Navy divers locate sunken vessel in Bay
Navy divers locate sunken vessel in Bay
The divers of Bangladesh Navy could manage to locate the sunken fishing vessel FV Bandhan this morning, around 32 hours after the vessel was capsized in the Bay on Friday early hours.
No new bodies were recovered or none of the missing crews could be rescued till filing of the report as of 6:00pm.
Navy ship, BNS Adamya which is equipped with modern rescue gears reached the spot from Chittagong in the wee hours yesterday and started to locate the sunken vessel.
BNS Adamya through its side scanner SONAR found several images of an object similar to the sunken vessel at around 9:00am, said Commander Shamim Md Khan, in-charge of Navy Intelligence (Chittagong zone).
After getting under-water images, Navy divers tried to go under deep sea to confirm whether it was the sunken vessel or not.
But they faced problems for diving mainly for huge depth of sea and the high and low tides, said the Commander.
The Navy divers, however, dived and found the vessel at around 11:00am, said a Navy official preferring anonymity, adding that the vessel was found tilted on the right side around 1000 metre off the accident spot.
The divers managed to hook on the sunken vessel with a rope so that they could easily reach there next time, said Commander Shamim adding that the divers pull out a carton from the vessel but could not enter into it.
The divers would now try to cut the doors or windows of the vessel to search for bodies of missing crews.
Along with navy ships BNS Samudrojoy, BNS Atondro, and BNS Adamya, three more navy ships BNS Bangabandhu, BNS Sagor and BNS Khadem joined the search operation yesterday morning.
Besides these, a navy salvage ship BNS Saikat was sent from Chittagong at around 2:00pm today to help salvaging the ship.
Meanwhile, the two rescued crews of the vessel Sajib Hasan, 25, a junior officer, and crew Lavlu, 28, and dead body of crew Nasir Uddin, 40, were brought back to Potenga 15 No. jetty here by a fishing vessel FV Joutha Udyam, owned by Bengal Fisheries Ltd, around 11:00pm.
Talking to the newsmen, Lavlu said their vessel turned upside down when it was hit by Bashundhara-8 and he was found himself beneath the vessel.
Finding a small chance he managed to swim out of the ship and found Nasir.
“We both tried to hold one side of the sinking vessel but it was speedily going straight down and then we put off our dresses and found a wooden substance to float,” said Lavlu adding that the two swam for around half an hour in the dark cold sea and at one stage Nasir who earlier got hurt succumbed.
Lavlu then tied himself with Nasir with a cloth and swam for around two hours in the vast sea before the two were rescued by the crew of a wooden fishing trawler Shatbdi.
Junior Officer Sajib was on duty at the bridge of the vessel on the horrible night while most of the crews were sleeping.
After noticing Bahundhara-8 heading towards us, we send messages through radio and also tried draw its attention by using our powerful lights but got no response from the merchant vessel.
At one stage it directly hit us leading our ship sank and I got senseless, said Sajib adding that he found himself at fishing vessel Shatabdi after he awoke.
Marine Fisheries Office, Chittagong an associated office of the Department of Fisheries formed a 5-member probe body led by its Deputy Director Mariam Sultana to investigate into the accident.
The committee has been asked to submit its report by 7 working days, said Director Nasiruddin Md Humayun.