Tide throws ashore bodies on which fish have feasted

CHACHHI, MAY 30: There is no dignity in death for the fishermen whose bodies have been washed ashore into creeks and mangroves. They brav...

CHACHHI, MAY 30: There is no dignity in death for the fishermen whose bodies have been washed ashore into creeks and mangroves. They braved last fortnight8217;s cyclone and the tidal waves that shattered their boats 8212; but finally drowned, either unable to swim ashore, or while waiting to be rescued. Crabs, fish, slugs and other organisms have feasted on their bodies, leaving only skeletons. Many rotting bodies had limbs bitten off.

When an Express Newsline team visited the areas off Jakhau on Saturday, two bodies were being recovered in the mangroves off the Jakhau port in Chachhi.

8220;They lay there for almost a week as search teams could not access the areas,8221; said Kutch additional collector I.C. Potdar, who accompanied one of the teams.

With only 24 bodies being found on Saturday, when a full-moon high-tide was expected to push ashore bodies of missing fishermen presumed dead, officials have given up hope of finding more. Saturday8217;s tide had flushed out these bodies from the creeks and mangroves and search teams recovered them. The body count is now 159.

Many bodies are far too decomposed to be identified. The teams 8212; comprising an executive magistrate, a doctor, a sub-inspector, and two witnesses acirc;euro;rdquo; make a panchnama and bury the bodies wherever they are found.

8220;Till two days ago we were finding only bloated bodies. But now, the ones we find are either badly decomposed ones or half-eaten skeletons,8221; said Potdar.

8220;These are bodies of some of the best swimmers, who swam for at least more than a day from mid-sea and then gave up and drowned or took shelter in the creeks and mangroves and died while waiting to be rescued,8221; says Damabhai Tandel, a fishing boat contractor of Jakhau.

Story continues below this ad

For the search teams, it was a gut-wrenching task. While Indian Air Force helicopters gave them the location of the bodies, the teams had to go either wading through knee-deep slush or on camel-back into the mangroves and creeks.

8220;At some places you cannot even dig a pit to bury the bodies, so we left them as they were,8221; said a team member.

Amar Kumar Mallik, a Valsad fisherman who returned safe from the storm, said that he and his crew saw several bodies floating off the Jakhau coast. 8220;We managed to save 15 fishermen who were swimming about. Many damaged boats were drifting towards Pakistan with the high waves,8221; he said.

According to Jumabhai of the Jakhau Fishing Association, there is no news of more than 200 fishermen. 8220;Since their bodies have not been found, we are hoping that they may have been rescued by Pakistani authorities, or that their bodies have been washed away to the Pakistan coast.8221;

Story continues below this ad

However, relief workers said, 8220;Whatever had to come out has come out during the tide. Now there is little chance of finding any more bodies.8221;

The government has also given up on its task now, with P.N. Roychowdhury, finance secretary, who is in charge of Kutch district, returning to Gandhinagar on Saturday evening.

8220;I don8217;t think we can find any more bodies now. Of course, the sea is unpredictable and it may throw up something any time,8221; he said. 8220;Now the task remains of finding some indirect way of ascertaining the exact number of people still missing, so that we can pay compensations.8221;

What about the remaining fishermen still missing? Roychowdhury said there is a 8220;small chance8221; that they may have drifted to Pakistan.