Two of the dead have been identified as Harish Bahadur Rao (27), originally a resident of Daining Dasho in Nepal and Vishwajit Kumar Singh (25) from Sahakat in Bihar. The third person has not been identified. While the bodies of the two named persons were recovered from the boat itself, it is thought that the third may have fallen into the sea. His body has not been recovered.

The Icchapore police, quoting post mortem reports of the deceased, stated that they died of suffocation after inhaling a poisonous gas, possibly carbon monoxide. They were bailing water out of the boat when they inhaled the gas, possibly from a motor or because of fermentation of soyabeans in the barge. Ichhapore PI N B Kalaswa is investigating the case.

Additional port officer Y P Deulekar said on Thursday that the barge's licence would be suspended if it was found that there was negligence on the part of the owner. The barge has been seized and anchored at the Magdalla jetty while investigations are on. It belongs to Bhavnagar based Ashish Shipping Agency and there were seven sailors on board when the mishap took place.

Preliminary studies revealed that before ferrying steam coal to the Magdalla jetty the barge had been used to transport soyabeans which were not properly cleaned out. Deulekar stated that one possibility was that these beans could have fermented and the sailors might have died because of inhaling a toxic gas as a result of fermentation. The sailors suffocated to death in the base of the barge where they had gone to remove excess water that had seeped into it.