Sikkim bound taxi accident toll goes up

Two of the three persons gone missing after yesterday’s accident on NH 31A at Likhubir have been traced, one dead and the other alive.

A Mahindra Maxx travelling from Siliguri to Gangtok with 11 people had plunged into the Teesta yesterday afternoon. Apart from those missing, two persons were confirmed dead and six were admitted to Siliguri hospitals with injuries.

The body of Ramesh Acharya was found today floating in the Teesta near Reang, said Kalimpong police. Acharya’s mother P. Varghavi Amma had also died in the accident.

Another missing man, unidentified till this morning, has been traced to Gangtok, alive. Inspector in charge of Kalimpong police station Puran Subba said Shiva Subba was apparently not seriously injured in the accident and had been helped on to a Gangtok-bound car by residents of the area. He is recuperating from head injuries at Sir Thutob Namgyal Memorial Hospital in Gangtok, said a source there.

Mehul Desai, the ICICI bank employee from Calcutta, is still missing. His wife Mridula is under treatment in Siliguri.

Mamata Magar, who was reportedly accompanying Amma, was released from North Bengal Medical College and Hospital today and went back to Rumtek in Sikkim. The relatives of Kheti and Bhawesh Narsana have arrived from Calcutta. The couple, it has been learnt, lives in Bhowanipur.

The Narsanas and the other survivors owe their lives to rafters from Chitre and Malli, located close to Likhubir. These rafters are the unsung heroes of numerous rescue missions on the Teesta, which runs along NH 31A connecting Siliguri to Gangtok.

A team of rafters from these areas had reached the spot to look for survivors, minutes after yesterday’s mishap. Today, they were back in the river, looking for the missing persons.

“Whenever we hear about accidents near the river, we act on our own. We know that a quick response can save lives,” said Sukhbir Tamang, owner of Action Adventure and Rescue Group, a Malli-based rafting unit.

The rescuers had played an important role in the aftermath of the collapse of a Bailey bridge at an NHPC project site at Reang in 2005. They again came to the power major’s aid a few months ago by retrieving the body of one of its officials who died after his jeep fell into the river near Swetijhora.

Tamang added that they “can always do with some assistance from the police and civil administration”. “At times, the police lend us vehicles to ferry our rafts and food to the spot, but that’s about it,” he said.

Kalimpong additional superintendent of police Humayun Kabir said his force shares a “very good relationship” with the rafting units. However, he was tight-lipped about providing further assistance to the rescuers.

Drivers plying on NH 31A said the the government agencies should ensure that the rafters have access to better equipment.

Source: The Telegraph