The rescue teams who rushed to the scene of the ferry disaster off the Mumbai coast were horrified by the sheer chaos and the desperate cries for help. They described it as one of the most traumatic events they had ever encountered. A Navy craft that lost control at around 4 pm on Wednesday during engine trials, collided with the passenger ferry Neel Kamal near Karanja, killing 13 people. However, 99 were rescued. The ferry had been on its way from the Gateway of India to Elephanta Island, which is a popular tourist spot.
Arif Bamane, the driver of the Mumbai Port Trust pilot boat Poorva, recalled the tragic event while speaking to news agency PTI. He said that upon reaching the spot, he saw people screaming and crying for help and that it was a scene of total chaos. One image that stuck with him was of a young girl, unconscious and struggling to breathe after swallowing water. Bamane and his team performed CPR, reviving her slowly until her breathing returned to normal. Bamane said that the rescue teams focussed on getting the women and children out on priority.
Before they reached the scene, a fishing trawler and another tourist boat had already begun evacuating survivors. Bamane’s boat, which had only four people on board, raced toward the accident site after receiving an emergency alert from the control room. There, he and his team worked frantically, saving about 20-25 people before naval boats arrived to take over the rescue.
With 18 years of experience driving boats, Bamane said he had never encountered anything as horrific as that day. “It was by far the largest and most tragic rescue operation I’ve ever witnessed,” he remarked.
Iqbal Gothekar, a seasoned boat driver who had been navigating the waters near Elephanta Island since 2004, was another early responder. His small tourist boat, which had just left the island at 3:35 pm, received word of the disaster 25-30 minutes later. By the time they arrived, the ferry passengers were desperately waving their arms for help. Gothekar’s boat, alongside a fishing trawler, rescued 16 individuals, safely bringing them back to the Gateway of India. “I’ve been in this business for years, but I’ve never seen anything like this,” Gothekar said, visibly shaken by the ordeal.
The capsized ferry, which had a capacity of 80 people, had departed from the Gateway of India about 45 minutes before the collision occurred near Butcher Island.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed his condolences for the lives lost in the tragic boat accident off the Mumbai coast. He announced an ex-gratia payment of Rs 2 lakh for the families of each deceased victim, and Rs 50,000 for those who were injured in the incident.