Bihar boat tragedy: Meet the man who fished out bodies from Ganga

Rajendra Sahni maintains that the boat which capsized on Saturday and later retrieved from under the Ganga by the NDRF divers was a extremely weak boat having a capacity of loading merely 20-25 people whereas there were almost double the number of people.

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Bihar boat tragedy: Meet the man who fished out bodies from Ganga

He was the first person to reach the site where the ill fated boat capsized in Patna on Saturday. Meet Rajendra Sahni, a local fisherman and a diver who lives in Diara area across the Ganga, where the incident happened. As soon as the incident was reported to the officials of the district administration, instead of calling police officers, government officers or bureaucrats, as has been a practice for several years, a phone call went to Rajendra Sahni telling him about the work at hand.

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I was at home when incident took place when the circle officer from district control room called me to reach the spot where the boat had capsized. Soon I reached the spot and laid the net in the water and by night I managed to fish out 20 bodies and today morning I have fished out 4 more bodies." he said.

Rajendra who has serving the local Patna administration for last 35 years is very well acquainted with Ganga. The man knows where and how deep is the river. Sahni maintains that the boat which capsized on Saturday and later retrieved from under the Ganga by the NDRF divers was a extremely weak boat having a capacity of loading merely 20-25 perople whereas there were almost double the number of people.

This boat was overloaded and therefore the boat capsized. The boat is in shambles. I have a long experience about boats and Ganga and therefore looking at the boat I am sure that the boat was very weak. The place where the incident happened, the water in not very deep but since people did not know how to swim they got drowned," he said.

Sahni said that after fishing out 25 bodies, he was sure that there were no more bodies in the river. The rescue operation was called off late today evening.

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