Kolkata:
One more body was found on Sunday, taking the death toll to 19 in the sinking of an overloaded trawler with pilgrims on board near Talpatty island in the Hooghly river at the confluence of the Bay of Bengal, official sources said.
So far 17 of the bodies, which were recovered after the trawler capsized and sank yesterday when it hit a sandbar while sailing from Hijli Sharif to Kakdwip in South Parganas, have been identified, the sources said.
Of the passengers on board, 50 persons were rescued and sent to hospital of which 23 were discharged after first aid, the sources said.
A small aircraft of the Coast Guard was circling over the area where the trawler sank, while divers, eight each from the Kolkata Port Trust and the Navy with echo sounding machines, were trying to ascertain the exact spot where the trawler went down.
Eight speedboats of the Civil Defence Department besides hovercraft of the Coast Guard were scouring the waters.
A 40- member team of the state disaster management force was also at hand, the sources said.
Angry villagers from Kakdwip blocked National Highway-117 to protest against eight bodies being taken to the Diamond Harbour Hospital instead of the Kakdwip Hospital yesterday.
They stopped the car of Civil Defence Minister Srikumar Mukherjee in protest, but allowed it to leave after he gave an assurance that the bodies would be taken to Kakdwip from Diamond Harbour after postmortem.
Besides Mukherjee, Sundarbans Development Minister Kanti Ganguly was also supervising the rescue operations.
Union ministers C M Jatua and Mukul Roy were also present.
Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee were scheduled to visit the spot.