On May 7, at 7.30 in the evening, fisherman Kunnummal Saidalavi was relaxing at home in Puthankadappuram when he got a call. A friend, who sounded frantic, was on the line. He told Saidalavi that a boat had capsized in the Poorappuzha estuary in Tanur. Filled with dread knowing that his wife and four children were among the passengers, Saidalavi rushed to the estuary, located about 10 km away. On reaching the bank of the river, he clambered into a vessel to help in rescue efforts. While he searched the dark waters anxiously, a diver suddenly thrust a body into his arms. It was his 13-year-old daughter, Shafna. Saidalavi’s wails pierced the darkness.
For a minute, even those scrambling through the rescue efforts stopped. “Those wails made us all weep. It was too much to bear,” says Harshad Cheruvath, a resident of the area. “He was crying saying, ‘This is my child; the others are in the water. I can’t leave without them,’” he recalls.
Just about an hour earlier, the boat, named Atlantic, carrying about 40 passengers, had capsized in Poorappuzha, a tributary of Kadalundipuzha. The tragedy took place near a newly developed tourist spot along the coast. Cheruvath says the local people and personnel from the Department of Fire and Rescue Services struggled to reach the passengers trapped inside the boat, which was resting on the muddy riverbed. Twenty-two people, including 15 children and five women, lost their lives in the incident near Thooval Theeram beach. All the passengers were from Malappuram district. Nearly half the passengers who lost their lives were from fisher families.
A day later, an eerie silence shrouds Saidalavi’s ramshackle dwelling at Puthankadappuram. Visitors stream in and out, expressing their sympathy and offering support. Saidalavi and his younger brother Siraj, who is also a fisherman, are in shock. Both of them have lost their wives and all their children. Their sister, too, lost her two children in the tragedy.
While Siraj, the blood seemingly drained from his face, sits quietly, Saidalavi regrets that his children did not heed his warning. He says they called him excitedly from the boat to tell him that they had been given a lucrative offer: buy one ticket for a boat ride and get another free. “I had told them not to get into that boat, but they had already been convinced,” he mourns. That had been their last conversation.
Searching for survivors
The task of the search team was cut out that night. The rescuers had no idea how many people had got into the boat, which had a capacity of about 25. There was neither a passenger chart nor a proper ticketing system. Safety had clearly been thrown to the winds from the start.
The people of the area accuse Nasar P. Tanur, the boat operator, of converting an ordinary fishing boat with a round-bottomed hull into a passenger vessel fitted with an upper deck, at a yard in Ponnani, by influencing the authorities. K.T. Chacko, chairman of the Kerala Shipping and Inland Navigation Corporation, says boats with fishing hulls should not be used for ferrying tourists. “Fishing and passenger boats operate differently on water. Using fishing boats to carry passengers is risky,” he says.
Soon after the tragedy, Nasar went missing. He was arrested later. So were the boat crew who swam to safety after the accident.
Atlantic also did not have permission to operate beyond 6 p.m., say the police. Yet, it set out on its last trip from a makeshift jetty at Thooval Theeram around 6.45 p.m. Pratheesh, who was sitting on the beach when the boat capsized, and whose video of the boat’s last journey went viral on social media, told The Hindu, “Even when the boat started from the jetty, it was tilting towards one side. We were scared. We just watched its movement. It capsized while taking a sharp turn in the middle of the river.”
The boat sank about 300 metres off Thooval Theeram, some 15 minutes after leaving the jetty. “Most passengers were flung to one side when it turned. Soon, we were all in the water. I hit my head against something, but I thankfully managed to escape with my little daughter,” says Rajisha, one of the survivors. Rajisha’s child and husband survived as they were wearing life jackets. She says only five passengers, of which four were children, had worn life jackets on that ill-fated journey.
The efforts of the rescuers were hampered by the darkness, the deep water, and the muddy bottom of the river. Ambika, who saw the boat sinking, says the lack of lights also hampered the rescue in the initial phase. “We could hear music blaring from the boat. Suddenly I heard loud cries, and the boat’s lights started to dim. We shouted for help. Many local people jumped into the river and started swimming towards the boat,” she recalls.
The victims were trapped inside the glass-panelled lower deck of the boat. Some of the rescuers broke the glass panes with their hands to pull out the victims trapped inside, says Cheruvath. “Many of them didn’t realise they were bleeding from the wounds caused by broken glass and oyster shells,” he says.
The aftermath of the tragedy
Soon, the State machinery sprang into action. The Minister of Tourism, P.A. Mohammed Riyas, and the Minister of Sports, V. Abdurahiman, commanded the search and rescue operations. As news of the tragedy spread, people flocked to hospitals at Tanur, Tirur, Tirurangadi, and Kottakkal — all towns in Malappuram district — in search of their relatives and friends. Roads were cleared for ambulances.
The State was put on high alert. Doctors were called in from the neighbouring districts of Kozhikode and Thrissur to handle the emergency. The death toll rose to 22 by 11.30 p.m., when the boat was hauled out of the river. As doubts lingered about the total number of passengers in the vessel, teams of the Navy and the National Disaster Response Force came the next morning to conduct another search. A few hours later, the search was called off and the government declared that there were no more victims. As per government figures, there were 37 passengers in the boat of which 22 died, 10 were rescued with injuries, and five swam to safety.
The postmortem of the victims was conducted by 9 a.m. on May 8. The 11 victims of Saidalavi’s family were buried in a row at Puthankadappuram. Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan led a line of Ministers to pay homage to the victims and announced that a compensation of ₹10 lakh would be given to the kin of each victim. The Union government offered ₹2 lakh, too. Health Minister Veena George assured mental health support to the survivors and the family members of the victims. The State Human Rights Commission filed a case and sought a report within 10 days from the District Collector and the District Police Chief. The Kerala State Commission for Protection of Child Rights also demanded a report.
By this time, the people’s grief had given way to anger. There are allegations that those in power had been complicit in the flouting of safety norms. Unconfirmed reports said officials had overlooked complaints of irregularities against Nasar. “There was a lapse on the part of the police. The municipal authorities too ignored the matter. This tragedy could have been averted,” says K. Raju, a former police superintendent from Tanur.
Anger soon grew into rage: people burnt the makeshift boat jetty, one of the many that have come up in the region lately, and protested outside a court at Parappanangadi when Nasar was brought there. They said the tragedy was a result of his greed and callousness.
The government also announced an inquiry by a judicial commission led by retired judge V.K. Mohanan. But this has not helped calm the agitated people of Tanur.
A history of warnings
Kerala has seen many boat tragedies. In 2002, in Kumarakom, a lush town known for backwater tourism, 29 people, including a nine-month-old baby, were killed in a ferry accident. In the Thattekkad tragedy of 2007, 18 people who were on a school excursion lost their lives. In 2009, a double-decker passenger boat sank in Thekkady killing 45 people, mostly tourists.
Judicial commissions were set up to investigate these accidents. The commissions, led by M.M. Pareethu Pillai (Thattekkad), and E. Moideen Kunhu (Thekkady) and K. Narayana Kurup (Kumarakom), gave several recommendations to improve safety, but these remain on paper. Some of their suggestions include setting up a safety commissioner for inland water transport, insurance for all passenger boats, compulsory use of life jackets, and stringent action against officials responsible for a tragedy.
Most people believe that Tanur was a tragedy foretold. A few weeks before the disaster, Muralee Thummarukudy, an expert in disaster management and an operations manager at the Crisis Management Branch of the United Nations Environment Programme, had warned of an imminent houseboat tragedy in the State. Thummarukudy had said that the State needs a water safety policy, not just one on boat safety. “We can reduce accident deaths in Kerala by two-thirds by sensibly applying the technical know-how and the systems currently available in the world,” he had said. He had urged people to be more conscious of safety. Thummarukudy had also highlighted the absence of proper briefings in houseboats, the lack of trained drivers, and the consequences of boats not having licences.
Boat accidents in Kerala have claimed about 200 lives in the last two decades. The State has a vast network of inland waterways with tremendous tourism potential, but it has been evident time and again that there have been compromises on safety. As per official data, 3,213 inland vessels are in operation in the State’s waterways, but industry insiders say there are an estimated 4,000 vessels, including unlicensed ones. There is no fool-proof mechanism to detect illegal inland vessels. The Kerala Inland Vessels Rules of 2010 and the Kerala Maritime Board Act of 2017 have been poorly enforced. The Kerala Maritime Board is the nodal agency to ensure fitness, licensing, and safe operation of all tourist vessels in the State, including houseboats. But it does not have an uniformed enforcement wing. Recommendations to form special police units under a deputy superintendent of police remain on paper. The police, too, do not have a mechanism to keep a tab on vessels flouting norms.
Naval architects have repeatedly asked all boat operators to prominently display the carrying capacity and registration on the vessel, but these pleas have fallen on deaf ears. Naval architect Paulson Joseph, a member of the Kerala Maritime Board-approved consultants panel, says accidents are preventable if boat builders and operators adhere to approved designs and safety norms. “If they don’t, insurance firms can reject compensation claims in case of accidents. More catamaran ferries must be introduced, since single-hull vessels that have inadequate width are a safety hazard,” he says.
A “free-for-all situation” prevails in many remote areas where tourist boats operate, says Professor K. Sivaprasad, Department of Ship Technology, Cochin University of Science and Technology. “This can be prevented if local bodies have a stake in regulating boat operations. There must be curbs on having an upper deck. The government must appoint an adequate number of naval architects so that enforcement is foolproof. It must also publish a list of authorised vessels online so that travellers can verify the safety status of the boats they board,” he says.
In the wake of the Tanur tragedy, the All Kerala Houseboat Owners’ Federation has repeated its demand that the Kerala Maritime Board and the State tourism department take urgent steps to hold erring kettuvallam (houseboat) operators accountable. “Houseboats are a huge draw in Alappuzha and Kumarakom. The tourism department has a scheme of classifying houseboats to assess their safety and service standards and to provide government aid accordingly. Only a small percentage of houseboat operators have chosen to subscribe to this despite regular accidents,” says an industry insider.
While ferries and tourist boats operated by government agencies largely adhere to safety norms, such as keeping an adequate number of life jackets, lifebuoys, and buoyant apparatus, private operators are under no compulsion to follow suit. Further, as Thummarukudy pointed out, there are hardly any safety briefings for the passengers on board.
The people of Tanur say they raised a hue and cry when Atlantic began carrying tourists along the Poorappuzha a few weeks ago. Following complaints, the police stopped the service for a day, but allowed services to resume the next day.
Saidalavi says his children were good students and had dreamed of building him a proper house. “I had taught them how to swim, but they got stuck under the boat. And I have lost everything I had,” he mourns.
