A couple of Indian Coast Guard hovercraft rescued 182 passengers, mostly Ganga Sagar pilgrims, from a launch that ran aground near Namkhana, in South 24-Parganas, early on Tuesday.
The vessel was on its way to the mainland from Sagar Island when it ran aground during low tide and amid dense fog.
Vessels on their way back from Ganga Sagar have to cross the Muriganga river.
A senior Coast Guard officer said the depth of the Muriganga varies from tide to tide. “It is possible that the pilot of the ferry entered a wrong section of the river because of fog and poor visibility,” the officer said.
A senior officer of the Coast Guard said they received a distress call that a vessel had got stranded near Namkhana.
“We dispatched a couple of Indian Coast Guard hovercraft to the spot based on the coordinates we received,” the officer said.
Once the hovercraft reached the place where the ferry had run aground, four Gemini boats — rubber dinghies fitted with engines that can operate in extremely shallow waters — started transporting passengers from the stranded vessel to the hovercraft.
“Our hovercraft ran multiple trips to bring the passengers to land. There was also a team on the stranded vessel to coordinate the rescue efforts. Each hovercraft transported around 60 passengers to the riverbank at a time and came back to the stranded vessel,” the officer said.
“Our team enquired about the health of the passengers. We also distributed blankets because it was extremely cold,” the officer added.
Lakhs of people from across the country gather on Sagar Island every year on Makar Sankranti to take a dip at the confluence of the Ganga and the Bay of Bengal.
