LAHORE: A dilapidated boat carrying 60 to 70 passengers capsized in the Ravi near Saidwala village in Nankana district on Friday.

By late night the Rescue 1122 workers had recovered the body of a child who had drowned and rescued more than 50 people travelling on the boat.

The incident occurred at around noon when the boat, ferrying people to villages on the other side of the river, reached the middle of the river and sank, apparently due to the heavy weight of the luggage, which included motorcycles, loaded onto it.

Nankana’s Deputy Commissioner Saira Umer said nearly 60 passengers had managed to swim to safety while teams of Rescue 1122 workers arrived at the scene at around 12:35pm and helped tug the remaining passengers to the river bank.

Body of child recovered by Rescue 1122

The search operation for any passengers who might have drowned continued for seven hours and was called off at sundown. “We went to local mosques and asked people to report any residents missing from their areas.”

She said that only one man had contacted them about his five-year-old daughter from Jaranwala who was travelling on the boat to Okara and had gone missing. The body of the missing child, Muqaddas, was later recovered.

The deputy commissioner said the search operation would continue on Saturday morning.

“We have asked army divers for help...they will reach here on Saturday morning (today) to continue the operation,” she said.

According to our reporter in Sheikhupura, several people in the area had claimed that dozens of passengers were still missing. However, DPO Sahibzada Umar Bilal dismissed it as a rumour, insisting that everyone aboard the ill-fated boat had been rescued.

“There were rumours... but no one has come forward to report missing relatives,” he said.

The spokesperson for Rescue 1122, Jam Sajjad Husain, said teams from five districts had conducted the rescue operation and evacuated 50 people with the help of people in the area.

Published in Dawn February 4th, 2017