All missing on board barge P305, tugboat accounted for: Navy
Mumbai: All the 274 personnel who were on board barge P305 that sank and tugboat Varaprada that went adrift during Cyclone Tauktae fury have been accounted for with the recovery of 16 bodies along Maharashtra and Gujarat coasts, the Navy said on Monday.
"A total of 274 crew were reported missing on May 17 (261 from Barge P305 and 13 from Tug Varaprada). While 186 survivors from P305 and two from Varaprada were picked up at sea, 70 mortal remains (bodies) were recovered at sea by ships of Indian Navy and Coast Guard," a Navy spokesperson said.
"Eight bodies have been recovered along the coast in Raigad district of Maharashtra and another eight bodies washed ashore the Gujarat coast near Valsad," he said.
Thus all the 274 crew (261 on board P305 and 13 on board Varaprada) have been accounted for, he said. The final confirmation will be pending till the identification of all the bodies recovered is completed, he added.
Rescue personnel had recovered 70 bodies, believed to be of P305 personnel, in the sea till Sunday. With 16 bodies washing ashore, the death toll in the tragedy at sea could rise to 86, another official said. As of now, the official death toll stands at 70 pending identification of the bodies washed ashore.
INS Makar, a Navy survey catamaran equipped with side scan sonars, located the wreckage of P305 on Saturday in the vicinity of where it sank on May 17. The Navy had also deployed specialised diving teams to boost the search and rescue (SAR) operations. The SAR operations haven't been call off yet, the spokesperson told PTI.
The relatives of the victims will try to identify the deceased with the help of the belongings found on their bodies, like clothes, identity cards, batch number or birth marks, previous injury marks or tattoos. In case the bodies are not identified, DNA tests would be conducted, another official said.
All the 440 persons on barges Gal Constructor and Support Station 3 (SS-3) and drillship Sagar Bhushan were brought ashore to safety recently.
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Two injuries, one DNF, a DQ as India end messy World Relays campaign
Gaborone (Botswana) (PTI): Amoj Jacob and Ragul Kumar got injured during the men's 4x400m and 4x100 races respectively as India ended their World Athletics Relays campaign in disappointment on the second day of competitions here on Sunday.
The Indian camp had high hopes of making the 2027 World Championships in the men's 4x400m relay but the team did not finish (DNF) the race as Jacob suffered cramps and pulled out of the race after taking the baton from the first leg runner Dharamveer Choudhary. Rajesh Ramesh and Vishal TK were to run in the third and fourth legs.
Those teams which could not qualify for the 2027 Beijing World Championships by reaching the final round of each of the six relay events on Saturday were given another chance in the second qualification round on Sunday.
The top two teams in each of the two heats (in all six relay events) booked the Beijing ticket on Sunday.
India will now have to try and qualify for the World Championships through the Top Lists of the World Athletics, which is a long and tedious process.
In the men's 4x100m race, third leg runner Ragul Kumar fell down the track after failing to hand over the baton inside the exchange zone to fourth leg runner Gurindervir Singh, which clearly showed the lack of coordination among the runners.
Harsh Santosh Raut and Animesh Kujur ran the first two legs.
The Indian quartet was disqualified and Kumar was seen being taken away from the Field of Play with the help of the volunteers.
It was a comedy of errors in the case of the women's 4x100m race, which saw the baton being dropped during an exchange between first leg runner Tamanna and second runner Nithya Gandhe, though the Indians finished the race in 53.09 seconds.
Gandhe started running quite a distance, but after realising that the baton was not in her hand, she turned and ran back to pick it up.
The only silver-lining for the Indian contingent was the national record time in the mixed 4x100m relay race, though the quartet of Ragul Kumar, Nithya Gandhe, Animesh Kujur and Sneha SS finished sixth in heat number two with a time of 41.35 seconds, bettering the previous national mark of 42.30 seconds set in March in Chandigarh.
The mixed 4x400m relay quartet of Theerthesh P Shetty, Kumari Saloni, Nihal William and Rashdeep Kaur ended at fifth in heat number one with a time of 3 minutes and 19.40 seconds.
On Saturday, all the five Indian relay teams had failed to make it to the respective final rounds and thus missed out on the 2027 World Championships berths.
