INS Nireekshak continues underwater search for 6 missing fishermen off Mangaluru coast
New Delhi, Apr 17: Indian Naval Ship (INS) Nireekshak continued its underwater search on Saturday to find six fishermen who have been missing since their boat collided with a foreign cargo vessel off the Mangaluru coast on Tuesday, Navy officials said.
They said the bodies of three fishermen that were recovered on Friday were handed over to the local authorities in Mangaluru on Saturday.
There were a total of 14 fishermen on Indian fishing boat Rabah when it collided with Singapore-registered vessel MV APL Le Havre around 41 nautical miles west of the Mangaluru coast on Tuesday.
While two of the 14 were saved by the Singaporean vessel's personnel immediately, three bodies were recovered a little later on Tuesday itself.
INS Nireekshak was pressed into action on Friday and it recovered three more bodies after a couple of hours of search operation. These three bodies were handed over to the local authorities in Mangaluru on Saturday, Navy officials said, adding that the search for the remaining six fishermen continues.
INS Nireekshak is a diving support vessel that can undertake deep sea diving operations using specialised equipment and naval divers.
Other Indian naval ships Subhadra and Tillangchang, along with an aircraft from the naval air station in Goa, have also been deployed since Wednesday to search for the missing fishermen, the officials noted.
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MP cruise boat tragedy: Search ops expanded to trace four missing passengers
Jabalpur (PTI): Army divers and disaster response teams on Saturday expanded their search at Bargi Dam in Madhya Pradesh to locate a man and three children still missing after the cruise boat tragedy that claimed nine lives two days ago, officials said.
With 28 of the 41 identified passengers onboard the ill-fated cruise boat rescued safely, police are preparing to register an FIR in connection with the accident that occurred at the reservoir in Jabalpur district on Thursday evening, they said.
The search radius has been expanded to 5 km in the backwaters of the Bargi Dam, located downstream of the Narmada River, area sub-divisional officer of police (SDOP) Anjul Ayank Mishra told PTI.
Nine people drowned in the incident, while 28 were rescued, and efforts are ongoing to trace the missing persons, he said.
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According to the police, more than 200 rescuers, including around 20 Army divers airlifted from Agra, began the search operation at 5 am on Saturday to trace Kamraj, an employee of the Ordnance Factory in Khamaria, his son Tamil (5), Vijay Soni (6) and Mayuram (5).
Mishra said that an inquest case has been registered and the post-mortem of nine deceased persons has been completed.
"Our priority is to search for the missing persons. We will soon register an FIR," he said.
Investigators have said that CCTV footage near the boarding point showed 43 people heading towards the ill-fated boat, and the names of 41 persons, who boarded the vessel, have been ascertained so far.
Collector Raghvendra Singh confirmed that a search is underway for four missing persons.
The rescue operation, being carried out by the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) and local divers, was briefly affected around 9 am due to strong winds.
The state government on Friday ordered a probe into the incident and dismissed three crew members after survivors alleged negligence and safety lapses, including failure to provide life jackets.
The government also banned the operation of similar vessels in the state.
The boat, operated by the state tourism department, sank during a sudden storm around 6 pm on Thursday, and the wreckage was retrieved from the dam water on Friday, after the rescuers confirmed that there were no more bodies inside.
Eyewitnesses have said that strong winds made the water choppy, prompting passengers to raise an alarm and ask the crew to steer the vessel towards the riverbank.
A survivor alleged negligence by the crew and described a last-minute scramble for life jackets.
