Arrest warrant issued against four launch owners, 4 others

Arrest warrants have been issued against eight people including four owners of the launch MV Abhijan-10 which caught fire early Friday (24 December) claiming 42 lives. Special Metropolitan Magistrate Joynab Begum of Marine Court issued the order following a case filed over the incident on Sunday (26 December) afternoon. The accused in the case are the four owners of the launch company Messer's Al Araf & Company – Hamzalal Sheikh, Md Shamim Ahmed, Md Russell Ahmed and Ferdous Hasan Rabbi; the Master-in-Charge of the launch Md Riaz Sikder; Driver-in-Charge Md Masum Billah; Second Master Md Khalilur Rahman, and Second Driver Abul Kalam, stated the case file. Chief Inspector of the Department of Shipping, Md Shafiqur Rahman, filed the case under the Inland Shipping Ordinance (ISO), 1976.

Sources at the Department of Shipping said that the launch's fitness certificate, registration and master-driver's certificate will be suspended on Sunday as per the law. The case statement mentioned that there was a lack of adequate fire extinguishers, lifebuoys, sandboxes, and buckets in the launch and that there were many unofficially-kept diesel-carrying drums and cylinder gas cookers for cooking, which goes against sections 56, 66, 69, and 70 of the ISO'76 act and its 2005-amendment. For the aforementioned reasons, a case has been filed against the launch owners and the launch operators and officials. The charges were filed after the preliminary investigation report was submitted by the shipping department's Barishal inspector. A supplementary application will be filed after the probe body, formed for this incident, submits its report.

Earlier, a case has been filed with the Barguna Chief Judicial Magistrate Court against the owner of MV Obhijan 10, Hamjalal Sheikh, and 24 others in connection with the deadly fire on the launch that left at least 41 people dead and many more injured in Jhalakathi. Advocate Nazmul Islam Nasir, chairman of Baliatoli union parisahd of Barguna, filed the case on Sunday. Barguna Chief Judicial Magistrate Mohammad Mahbub Alam accepted the case and asked the police station concerned to record the complaint as a first information report (FIR), said an administrative official of the court, Akhter Hossain. Saifur Rahman Sohag, lawyer of the plaintiff, said it is clear that there was negligence on part of the owner and staff of the launch and the court ordered the police station concerned to log the case as an FIR. Advocate Nasir said: “There was clear negligence on part of the owner and staff of the launch that caused the fire, deaths and damages.” He also demanded immediate arrest of the accused in the case.

Meanwhile, the search drive in the Sugandha River was going on for the third consecutive day on Sunday for finding those who went missing following the massive fire on the launch on Friday. Divers from the local fire service and the Coast Guard resumed the search operation on Saturday morning and it is still continuing, said Khalilur Rahman, officer-in-charge of Jhalakathi Sadar police station. No new bodies were recovered from the river till the filing of this report. Besides, the control room, set up by the local administration, listed the names of 25 missing people with information given by their relatives and family members.

Earlier, the bodies of 23 people were buried at a graveyard following a namaz-e-janaza in Barguna on Saturday. The bodies were buried at Potkakhali graveyard in Sadar upazila around 12pm. The blaze broke out at 3am on Friday on the Barguna-bound launch carrying some 800 passengers from Dhaka and it engulfed the entire vessel within 10 minutes. The death toll from the fire incident climbed to 41 on Saturday night. Besides, over 70 people suffered injuries and many of them are undergoing treatment at different hospitals.