Eighteen more corpses of the fishermen missing since March 25 were recovered from the Bay of Bengal yesterday, pushing the body count to 21.
Earlier on Monday, three bodies were recovered by locals.
In a joint operation, Navy and Coast Guard personnel found three bodies floating near the Kutubdia channel around 1:00pm yesterday and 15 about five nautical miles from the Kutubdia Lighthouse around 3:00pm, Lt Com SM Masudul Islam, commanding officer of Coast Guard Ship Towhid, told The Daily Star.
“The bodies, decomposed for a week, could not be identified immediately,” he added.
The rescue operation would continue for a day or two for the fishermen still missing, said the official.
The bodies recovered yesterday were first taken to Kutubdia and handed over to Kutubdia Police Station’s Officer-in-Charge Amirul Islam and Upazila Nirbahi Officer Firoze Ahmed. They were later turned over to Cox’s Bazar Additional Superintendent of Police (ASP) Babul Akhtar at Manama Ghat in Pekuwa upazila.
The ASP said, “The bodies were found with hands and legs tied. We have asked the Cox’s Bazar Sadar Hospital to conduct autopsy of the bodies.”
According to police and locals in Banshkhali, 34 fishermen on three trawlers — Allahr Dan, Allahr Dan-1 and Al Makka — left Shekherkhil area of the upazila for deep-sea fishing on March 24 and 25.
Abul Hashem and Jafar Majhi, owners of Allahr Dan and Allahr Dan-1, filed two general diaries on March 26 with Banshkhali Police Station about their missing crew and pirates attacking their boats.
Three of the crew aboard Allahr Dan came back ashore in the early hours of March 27 and told the trawler owners that all the three boats had been attacked by pirates some 25 kilometres from the Kutubdia channel.
As the news of floating bodies reached the shores, some relatives of the missing persons from Banshkhali went to the sea on a trawler on Monday and recovered three bodies. The deceased were identified as Nizam Uddin, Md Yunus and Md Matin.
Nurul Kabir, son of Abul Hashem, said, “We left for the sea on our own, as the police were not helping us find the missing people.”
He said they found the bodies near Jahajkhari area, about 20km from Kutubdia channel. There were more bodies, but they could not recover those due to poor visibility and rough sea.
Nur Hossain, one of the survivors, said a gang of 20 to 25 pirates started chasing them around 10:00pm on March 26. “I was driving the trawler when they started to fire rubber bullets at us. I was hit a couple of times. I tried my best to flee away, but gave up after around two hours.”
“Some of the pirates got on our boat and started beating the crew. I somehow managed to jump off,” he said.
The two other survivors, Kamal and Kashem, had followed Nur. They were rescued by another fishing trawler and dropped at Moheshkhali.
Nurul Kabir said the pirates looted valuables worth around Tk 12 lakh from his father’s fishing trawler.
Wednesday 3 April 2013
http://www.thedailystar.net/beta2/news/18-more-bodies-recovered/
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