The trip to the Bodeshwari temple turned into a tragedy.

At least 51 people died and around 15 were missing on Monday, the day after a boat carrying Hindu pilgrims sank in a river in northern Bangladesh.

The death toll rose after rescuers found 26 more bodies in the Karotoa River, downstream from the town of Boda where the boat tipped over and sank, local police official Sirajul Huda said.

According to local media, at least ten people were rescued and hospitalized.

The overloaded boat

The boat was carrying about 90 people, including about 50 Hindu pilgrims, according to the police.

“We will resume search operations tomorrow morning,” Sirajul Huda said Monday evening.

However, the police have revised the estimated number of missing from sixty downwards, as some were able to swim and be reunited with their families.

It now stands at fifteen.

The police further explained that the number of passengers was three times the capacity of the boat.

“There were heavy rains in the morning and that is why (…) the pilgrims piled into the boat to arrive quickly at the temple”.

“The boatman asked some people to disembark to lighten the load.

But no one listened,” Sirajul Huda lamented.

Footage taken with mobile phones, relayed by the television channel Channel 24, shows the overloaded boat suddenly flipping over, throwing the passengers into the muddy waters of the river.

Dozens of people on the banks about 20 meters away started screaming and screaming when they saw the scene.

The weather was calm at the time of the tragedy.

Lax security standards

Thousands of Hindus from Bangladesh, a Muslim-majority country, visit the Bodeshwari Temple every year.

Sunday marked the start of Durga Puja, the main Hindu festival in Bangladesh - as in eastern India - which draws large crowds to temples.

This accident extends a long list of comparable disasters in this country of 170 million inhabitants, poor and crossed by many rivers and rivers.

The tragedies associated with shipwrecks are mainly blamed on lack of maintenance, lax safety standards and overcrowding on board.

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