Agra: Seven days after a boat carrying 38 pilgrims collided with a pontoon bridge and capsized in the Yamuna in Mathura, the body of the lone missing person was fished out around 10am on Thursday, bringing the death toll to 16.Officials said the body of 40-year-old Pankaj Malhotra, which surfaced due to decomposition, was found 2.5km downstream from the accident site near Devraha Baba Ghat beneath Panigaon bridge. A large-scale search operation across a 30km stretch of the river involving police and teams of NDRF and SDRF, along with local divers, has now been called off.DSP Sandeep Kumar said Malhotra, a resident of Firozpur, Punjab, was a manager at a steel company in Himachal Pradesh.
“He arrived alone in Vrindavan on Friday. He was part of the group boating on the Yamuna when the vessel capsized, leading him to drown. His family has been informed and the body will be handed over to them after postmortem,” the DSP said. Malhotra is survived by his wife and two children.The accident took place on Friday when a boat carrying devotees from Punjab capsized after hitting a floating drum attached to a pontoon bridge near Keshi Ghat. Police said 22 people were rescued while others drowned. After the incident, an FIR was registered against the boatmen and the contractor involved in removing the pontoon bridge, and they were arrested under BNS section 105 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder).
Officials added that an investigation is underway to determine the exact cause of the accident and to prevent such incidents in the future.
