The last two bodies surfaced on Sunday morning, bringing a three-day search on the waters of the Bargi Dam to a close, and the final toll of the cruise disaster in Jabalpur stood at 13.
Among them were a 9-year-old child, Mayuram, and his uncle, Kamraj, an employee of the ordnance factory in Jabalpur.
Kamraj had moved his family from Tiruchy to Jabalpur about a year ago, following work at the city’s ordnance factory. His wife, Karkuzhali, thought the school holidays were a good time to have family around. Her relatives had come from Tamil Nadu for the summer; among them were Mayuram and his brother Iniya.
On Thursday, Kamraj took the day off. They left early, first to Bhedaghat, where the children rode the ropeway over the marble gorge, and then drove to the dam resort, arriving in the afternoon. By evening, they were on the water.
While Iniya was rescued following the disaster, Mayuram could not be traced. Kamraj’s younger son, Tamilventhan, had already been among those confirmed dead, his body flown back to Tamil Nadu. The child’s mother, Karkuzhali, also died in the accident.
Puvitharan (10), the sole remaining survivor of the Kamraj family, remembers the beginning as being completely ordinary. The boat moved smoothly. Somewhere on the upper deck, a group of passengers was celebrating a birthday.
“The weather was completely clear. There was no problem in the beginning. The wind suddenly became very strong. The waves started hitting hard,” the boy said.
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Among his family, he said, only the children had been given life jackets before boarding. When the movement turned violent, the adults began reaching for them too. “But by then,” he said, “it was already too late.”
As the boat overturned, the boy was thrown into the choppy waters. He was spotted by local workers at the shore. “I raised my hand and one uncle threw the rope at me and I caught it,” he said. After his rescue the boy went back to Tamil Nadu with his grandmother, his relatives flown in caskets.
The search had widened steadily over the past two days – divers working 40 to 50 feet below the surface, scanning a radius of nearly five kilometres. More than 200 personnel, including Army divers airlifted from Agra, teams from the NDRF and SDRF, and local rescuers, had worked in shifts, navigating silted waters and low visibility before the final recoveries were made.
Jabalpur collector Raghvendra Singh told The Indian Express, “We recovered the last two bodies in this unfortunate incident. The dam is located in a large area which is used for various activities like irrigation, electricity generation. The divers could only go for 15 minutes at a time to look for the submerged bodies. The visibility was very low. Everyone tried their best to trace the survivors.”
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Collector Singh said the cruise ship had a life expectancy of 50 years and had completed 20 years in service. He said the fitness check was undertaken every two months, and the cruise ship had passed the fitness test in its last check. “The reason for the disaster was the violent storm which even uprooted nearby trees,” Singh said.
Investigators say all 41 identified passengers on board the vessel have now been accounted for – 28 rescued, 13 dead.
The boat, a two-decade-old vessel operated by the state tourism department, had capsized on Thursday evening after being caught in a sudden storm on the Narmada reservoir near Jabalpur. Since then, the focus has shifted from rescue to accountability. The state government has ordered an inquiry, dismissed key staff, and halted similar cruise operations across Madhya Pradesh.
