KOLKATA: A 22-year-old youth is feared to have drowned in the Hooghly on Sunday afternoon while attempting a dangerous stunt by jumping off the Vidyasagar Setu deck, which was recorded on a cellphone camera. The chilling video taken by his friends from atop the bridge shows Zakir Sardar jumping off and hitting the water 200 ft below. Unlike his friend Md Dasdagir Alam, who had jumped moments earlier and resurfaced after entering the water, Zakir did not.
Crucial time was lost as Dasdagir did not disclose to the river traffic police that Zakir was missing after a fisherman’s boat rescued him from mid-river handed him to the cops. It was only after Zakir’s father lodged a missing person’s complaint with at the Hastings police station on Monday morning and cops got hold of the video that they learnt Zakir had also jumped off the bridge the previous afternoon. Till late on Monday morning, attempts to trace him by the Disaster Management Group divers proved futile.
The answer to Zakir’s accident lies in the video that showed him strike the water sideways unlike Dasdagir, who dived in vertically. Divers said Zakir might have had suffered fractures in the impact with the water surface and damaged internal organs when he hit the water horizontally, and might have had lost consciousness.
A resident of Tiljala in southeast Kolkata, Zakir, Dasdagir and three others reached the second Hooghly bridge on bikes, parked them near the kerb on the central section, where the deck is at the highest point from the river and then attempted the stunt. In the video, the friends are heard urging a somewhat nervous Zakir to leap after cheering Dasdagir’s confident jump. When Zakir did not surface after the jump, the friends were heard frantically asking Dasdagir, who was still in the water, to look for him. The video ended abruptly as the youths on the bridge fled in panic.
Cops are questioning the youths to check if there was a bet involved that prompted Zakir to take the fatal jump and why they did not alert police. Dasdagir, a resident of G J Khan Road, is an autorickshaw driver. He claimed they wanted to shoot a “fun video” and had performed stunts earlier as well, including one off Howrah bridge that had been recorded by his friends. Neither his family nor that of others had any clue about the thrill-seeking misadventure that they indulged in.
In the past, people have jumped off Howrah bridge, which is at a lesser height over the water than Vidyasagar Setu. Most of them have been suicide attempts. A couple of years ago, Kolkata Port Trust that maintains the bridge fixed a high fence along the railing to discourage such attempts. There is no such barrier on Vidyasagar Setu.
The incident has raised some disturbing questions over how the site on the bridge, less than 1 km from state secretariat Nabanna, was unguarded. Police are also looking at whether there was any negligence or delay on the part of river traffic police in launching rescue operations.