Guwahati, Sept. 23: They folded their hands and prayed as they went under. I screamed and requested them to catch the lifebuoy string but they did not. Both caught each other with the child in between….

For 28-year-old boatman Tuku Das, it was a horrid never-before experience as he helplessly watched a couple jump off his boat in the Brahmaputra around 10.10am today. The couple, with a baby aged about 18 months, had hired the boat at Sukreswar temple ghat around 9.45am for Rs 500. “He asked me to take a round and take them to the Umananda temple. They were sitting on the boat and did not talk much. As the boat neared the Umananda island, the man asked me not to stop and instead make a round of the island. I listened to them and as we got closer to Ashwaklanta (on the opposite bank), they caught each other and jumped off before I could run to them and stop,” Das told The Telegraph.

Das, a resident of north Guwahati, has been plying the boat between Sukreswar and Umananda for the last six years. “I have never had such experience and still can’t believe what happened in front of my eyes,” he said. “I got scared and called up the boat’s owner, Baikuntha Das, seeking help. He informed the river police and took the boat to river police station at Pandu,” the boatman said.

Local boatmen and river police personnel, along with the divers of State Disaster Response Force and National Disaster Response Force, launched a search but could not rescue anyone yet. The search had to be abandoned in the evening as darkness fell and it will resume tomorrow morning. A police source said the man was in his mid-thirties and the woman seems to be in her late-twenties.

Police said the couple had left a bag in the boat, which had a feeding bottle, a doctor’s prescription and some papers inside. “The prescription, dated August 18, 2013, was written by paediatrician Rakesh Kumar Jain, who has his chamber on NT Road, Nalbari. The name of the patient is Rasmita Mali in the prescription,” a police source said. When contacted, the doctor could not remember any patient by this name (Rashmita Mali).

“Hundreds of patients come to me every day and so it is really difficult to remember each and every one of them personally. Only if I see the prescription I might recollect something,” Jain said.

River tragedies

Since January this year, nine suicide cases were reported with Pandu river police outpost

August 23, 2013: A BA third-year student, Bandita Barman, committed suicide by jumping into the Brahmaputra from Saraighat bridge

July 23, 2013: IIT Guwahati student Ravindra Kumar Meena drowned while bathing
in the Brahmaputra

May 26, 2013: A 23-year-old daily wage earner, Birju Kurmi, drowned while taking bath with two others at Uzan Bazar ghat

December 9, 2012: Eight-year-old Kunal Debnath and nine-year- old Pradip Sinha of Pandu drowned while bathing