Staff Correspondent
A cargo vessel that hit oil tanker Southern Star-7 on the Shela river in Sundarbans a week ago was seized on Monday at Narayanganj with four of its crew members, police said.
Munju, a sub-inspector of Mongla Police Station in Khulna, in association with the Narayanganj Bandar Police Station,seized the vessel MT Total from Laxmankhola area. The detainees are: Mostafa, master of the cargo vessel, his assistant Faroque, and its sukani Akkas Mridha and Ear Ali.
Manju said they seized the cargo vessel following statements of the workers of the sunken oil tanker
Southern Star-7 and some fishermen who viewed how the accident took place in the Shela River.
The tanker sank in the river with a load of more than 350,000 litres of furnace oil, much of which spilled out in the Shela and Pashur rivers following the accident, causing huge damage to flora and fauna and threatening vio-diversity in the world's largest mangrove forest and also a UNESCO heritage site.
Meanwhile, green activists under the banner of Paribesh Andolon formed a human chain in front of the Narayanganj Press Club demanding removal of Shipping Minister Shahjahan Khan as he did not initiate immediate measures to remove oil from Shela River.
Five days after the sinking, the master of the tanker, Mokhlesur Rahman, was retrieved from the Shela river on Sunday.
Signs of death and damage are already becoming visible with finding of a dead dolphin and several birds and herbs soiled in thick oily mud, environment and forest officials said. They are trying to get deeper into the forests to check out the full extent of the damage, one official in Bagerhat said on Monday.
Authorities have ordered multiple investigations into the sinking and spillage of oil that could prove one of major environmental disasters of recent time.