The following day, the ferry was salvaged and nine bodies retrieved from it, bringing the number of bodies recovered on May 16 to 35. Ten more bodies were recovered on the day of the accident. However, the state-owned Bangladesh Television reported that a total of 56 bodies had been recovered.

The ferry went down during a storm in the choppy Tentulia river at Galachipa, 350 kilometers (220 miles) south of the capital, Dhaka. The vessel was registered to carry only 80 people.

Many of Bangladesh's ferries have little or no safety equipment, and operators and owners often neglect weather forecasts and shipping rules despite repeated accidents. At least 118 people died in the last major ferry disaster, on the river Buriganga near Dhaka, in February.