Bargi Dam tragedy: Divers find body of woman clutching child inside sunken cruise boat

Rescuers at Bargi Dam in Jabalpur recovered victims from a capsized cruise, including a woman clutching her child. Difficult underwater conditions hamper operations as the death toll rises and teams continue searching for missing passengers

Jabalpur: In a heart-wrenching discovery that moved seasoned rescuers, a diving team of a paramilitary force found the body of a woman who was onboard the ill-fated cruise boat that capsized in Madhya Pradesh’s Bargi Dam still clutching her child in a final, tight embrace.

The Agra-based diving team described the challenging conditions inside the submerged vessel, where limited space and jagged iron rods forced rescuers to use hammers to create narrow openings, with one diver almost getting trapped.

---

As many as nine people have died, and 22 have been rescued after a cruise boat overturned and sank in Bargi Dam in Jabalpur district following a sudden storm on Thursday evening, officials said.

“We initially encountered difficulty retrieving the body of a woman from the wreckage. We then discovered that she was holding her child tightly, and it was difficult to separate them. Our team was deeply moved by the scene,” one of the divers told PTI Videos.

He said that the conditions were extremely challenging, with the limited space, broken structures, and low visibility hampering the rescue operation.

Another member of the rescue team from Agra said that the visibility inside was extremely poor, and the team kept encountering broken structures and iron rods that snagged their equipment.

In some places, the team had to squeeze through narrow openings to conduct the search, he said, adding that at one point, a diver got trapped and had to be rescued.

According to the rescuers, the operation had become perilous, as the boat’s structure had completely collapsed on both sides, with internal grilles making the pathways dangerously narrow.

Despite these hurdles, the paramilitary team has so far recovered five bodies from the murky depths of the reservoir, including one child and four adults.