At least two Junior School Certificate (JSC) examination candidates drowned in the Titas river in Brahmanbaria district while going to attend their first examination crossing the river on Wednesday morning.
One of the deceased was identified as Nadira Akhtar.
Witnesses said a boat carrying about 150 students of Birgaon High School capsized in the river after hitting a bamboo pole in the Titash in the morning.
Five children are still missing.
Locals rescued the students and sent two of them to the local health complex in critical condition.
They were then shifted to Brahmanbaria Sadar Hospital where on-duty physicians declared them dead.
Nabinagar police station officer in-charge Aslam Shikdar confirmed the incident.
The JSC examinations began today (Wednesday). A total of 2,090,277 students — 971,336 males and 1,118,941 females – are sitting for the JSC exams while 378,543 examinees — 173,442 boys and 205,101 girls — appearing at the Junior Dakhil Certificate (JDC) exams, making the number 2,468,820 in total.
Students from 28,628 educational institutions are appearing at the examinations at 2,834 centres across the country.