Vietnamese police on Sunday detained the captain of a speedboat that capsized off southern Vietnam, k!lling 15 Indian tourists.
The speedboat was carrying 32 Indian tourists and four Vietnamese crew members when it overturned less than half a kilometer from shore Saturday afternoon, shortly after leaving Hon May Rut Ngoai island near Phu Quoc, Vietnam’s largest island, authorities said.
The captain, Nguyen Hong Hai, 57, is under investigation for alleged violations of waterway transport safety regulations, state media reported.
Sixteen survivors of Saturday’s speedboat accident have been discharged from the hospital and are returning to India, the Indian Embassy in Hanoi said on social media Sunday. One remains in critical condition in a Vietnamese hospital.
The bodies of the victims were being transported to Ho Chi Minh City before being flown to India after official formalities, according to the embassy.
Tuoi Tre newspaper reported that “initial assessments by Vietnamese authorities suggest this was an unavoidable incident caused by extreme weather conditions” that shifted rapidly.
All 15 victims were on a company trip organized by India’s Lava International, a smartphone and consumer electronics manufacturer, for its employees, distributors and retail partners, the company said.
Ashish Kumar, a 48-year-old distributor for the company from the Indian city of Guntur who took part in the trip, said the party had split into three groups to travel between islands when he witnessed the accident from shore.
The first boat had already departed while the other two were still docked when it capsized.
The boat was relatively close to shore when it flipped, he told The Associated Press over the phone. “We screamed, ‘Help! Help!'”
Nearby boats immediately rushed to the rescue. “But by then it was too late,” he said.