Three days have gone by but there have been no trace of two missing students of Ahsanullah University of Science and Technology (AUST) until yesterday, who, along with two others, had gone missing from Saint Martin’s Island on Monday after going swimming.
The two are Istiaq Bin Mahmud alias Uday and Sabbir Hossain Sagoto. Earlier on Wednesday, the Coast Guard recovered two bodies.
Lieutenant Quazi Harun-ur Rashid, commander of the Coast Guard’s Teknaf Station, told the Dhaka Tribune that the coast guard team, in cooperation with the local administration, was searching across the island relentlessly for the missing students.
“Besides, we are also giving mobile number to fishermen, who go to the sea by boat, so that they can call us if they find anything. We suspect we would find their bodies floating in the sea and we have asked the coast guard team to keep combing all the channels in the sea until the bodies are recovered,” he said.
The island beach management committee, meanwhile, held an emergency meeting at Cox’s Bazar district administration office yesterday around 12pm. The committee decided to appoint beach staff and lifeguards, to put up red flags in danger zones, and to distribute leaflets containing information on bathing in the beach.
Earlier on Monday, 34 students of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) of AUST went to the island on an excursion and checked into Senchur Hotel. Surge pushed ten of them far away as they went swimming. Of the ten, locals and the Coast Guard managed to rescue six while two of them – Monfezul Islam and Saddam Hossain – died later in hospital.
Soon after the incident, AUST students blamed the local authority for the death of their friends as there was no instruction and red flag in the area where they went to take bath. They also said the rescue team had made long delay before starting operation.
A friend of Sagoto sarcastically wrote on Facebook: “A little red cloth is much precious than six innocent lives. Our friends have lost their lives only for the mismanagement of local authority.”
Farhanul Morteza Farhan, a witness to the incident and also a survivor, told the Dhaka Tribune over phone about the mismanagement and negligence of local authority. “Moreover, the rescue team acted too late.”
Meanwhile, family members of Sagoto and Uday have been passing their days in agony since the accident happened. Uday is the son of Mahmud Ullah, an official at a multinational firm, who lives in flat no 45 at 32/1 of Basabo in the capital.
“I asked Uday not to make the trip as he didn’t know how to swim. However, I had to let him go when he insisted. Now that smiling face would never demand something from me,” Mahmud Ullah said.
Sagoto’s residence is located in the Housing Society area of Mohammadpur and his mother Selina Akter had become speechless right after the incident.
Holding a picture of Sagoto in her hands, Selina, with tears in her eyes, was wailing and saying: “Oh the Almighty, don’t let my son live only in picture. Bring him back as he has just begun his life.”
