Eight officials in Bangladesh face charges for ferry accident

Eight officials of the ferry Coco-4 which capsized Friday night in Bangladesh's Bhola district, 197 kms southeast of capital Dhaka, face charges for overloading the vessel and causing deaths of at least 76 passengers till Monday, in a criminal case filed by a passenger that survived from the ferry disaster, Xinhua reported.
  
"The case accuses authorities of Coco-4 of causing the accident and deaths of passengers by overloading and attempting to dock 50 feet (15 meters) away from the Nazirpur launch terminal," Jakir Hossain, police chief of the Lalmohon sub-district in Bhola district was quoted as saying by private news agency bdnews24.com on Tuesday.
  
The case was filed by surviving passenger M Faisal of Lalmohan, said Hossain.
  
Meanwhile, Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Authority (BIWTA) on Tuesday suspended three of its officials due to inordinate delay in arrival of rescue vessel Hamza at the scene.
  
The salvage rescue vessel of BIWTA, Hamza, took more than 24 hours to arrive at the scene from a neighboring district.
  
Another rescue vessel Rustom will join rescue operation on Tuesday evening to salvage the ferry, according to leading English newspaper The Daily Star.
  
Rescuers feared that many more victims were still trapped inside the ferry which capsized with around 2,000 passengers on board, almost three times the capacity.
  
A ferry carring many passengers who were returning home from Dhaka to celebrate Eid-ul-Azha, one of the biggest holidays for Muslim, capsized Friday night in Nazirpur ferry station when the passengers tried to get down from the ferry in a mess.
  
Millions of people have left the capital for their home towns by trains, buses and ferries to celebrate Eid-ul-Azha which falls on Nov. 28 this year in Bangladesh.
  
Inland Water Transport authorities earlier said about 1,000 people die in ferry accidents on an average every year in the country.
  
The ferry services never maintain list of passenger for which none can exactly say how many passengers a ferry carries.