Divers search for three missing after Saptakoshi motorboat accident

Seven divers have joined an ongoing search for three people who were still missing on Monday after a passenger motorboat crashed in Nepal’s Saptakoshi river. Police and Armed Police Force teams resumed operations early in the morning, concentrating on the water and the riverbanks near the accident site.

The accident happened at about 2pm on Sunday at Triveni in Sangurigadhi Rural Municipality-10, Dhankuta district. The boat had been travelling from Kopche in Bhojpur district towards Barahakshetra in Sunsari district when it crashed. Police estimated that 15 people, including the driver, had been on board.

Three passengers were confirmed dead on Sunday. Police said three people remained unaccounted for in the Monday update. The search status is therefore an account of an active rescue operation, rather than a final casualty total.

Police said preliminary information indicated that the boat, fitted with an outboard motor, suffered brake failure before the crash. That explanation remains preliminary. The update did not set out a final finding on how the accident occurred, and the continuing search was the immediate priority for the teams at the river.

Police said 12 people had been rescued and taken to Chatara Hospital for treatment after the incident. Three of those rescued were pronounced dead at the hospital. One injured passenger was reported to be in a stable condition. The boat driver was in police custody at the time of the update; no finding of responsibility was reported.

The renewed operation brings together divers from the Armed Police Force and Nepal Police personnel. An Armed Police Force team of seven divers and an 11-member group led by an inspector were deployed for search and rescue work. Their tasks include searching underwater and checking the riverbanks, where people or evidence of the boat’s path may be found after being carried downstream.

Nepal Police teams based in Chatara and Triveni are also using boats in the operation. The search area extends from Kopche towards Chatara, following the river corridor connected to the journey the motorboat had been making. Officials said the agencies were working in coordination as the second day of the response began.

The operation is not confined to a single point in the river. Divers are inspecting underwater while riverbank teams and police boats work along the downstream stretch. Officials said the work would continue, but no timetable for its completion was given. The Monday update did not report that any of the three missing people had been found by the time the new search phase began.

The operational detail marks a significant development from the initial account of the crash on Sunday. Rather than simply repeating the first emergency report, Monday’s update records that specialist divers and wider police teams were back on the river and along its banks while three people remained missing.

Information from river emergencies can change as people are located, casualty records are checked and searches move downstream. For now, the reported position is that three people had died and three were still missing when the search resumed. Any later change in that status would depend on the outcome of the continuing rescue operation and police assessment.