A survivor of the Mumbai ferry accident, which claimed 13 lives on Wednesday, recounted the harrowing 30 minutes she and her family members oscillated between life and death before help arrived. Vaishali Adkane, a resident of the Kurla area in suburban Mumbai, had been returning after visiting the Elephanta caves with her 14-month-old son and family when the tragedy happened.
Adkane told ABP Majha that eight members of her family had been sitting in the boat for 40 to 50 minutes when the Navy's speedboat rammed into it. The impact brought them to the floor of the ferry. One of the people on the speedboat was thrown overboard the ferry in the collision. Adkane said he was almost dead. She also saw the body of another person from the speedboat. However, they didn't realise the damage the ferry suffered until somebody screamed about the hole in the boat.
"Then, the driver of the ferry began screaming, "Put on your life jackets". My brother gave us all life jackets and we strapped them on. Suddenly, we felt the boat tilting to one side. It began to sink and some were trapped under the boat, while others drifted away," Adkane told ABP Majha.
She said many lost their life jackets in the impact of the collision and eventually drowned. "We were floating by holding on to the boat. I had to do something to save my 14-month-old son Sharvil. My brother held him above the water in his arm. He then put him on his shoulder and kept floating by clinging to the boat. For about 30 min, no one came to our aid. Then, two or three boats came to us. Had the boats been 10 minutes late, we would have died," said Vaishali Adkne.
She also described how a foreign couple saved a lot of people from drowning without caring for their own lives. "They saved seven people and put them on board the boats that came to help," said Vaishali Adkane.
Meanwhile, a naval helicopter and boats of the Navy and Coast Guard are still searching for two missing passengers, identified as 43-year-old Hansraj Bhati and seven-year-old Johan Mohammad Nisar Ahmed Pathan.
Of the 113 persons on board both vessels, 13 died and 98, including two injured, were rescued. There were six persons on board the Navy craft, of which two survived.