With the retrieval of more than 80 per cent of the parts of the Dornier aircraft which went missing on June 8, the Indian Coast Guard has called off the search and rescue operations off Tamil Nadu coast on Tuesday.
“We have retrieved 80 per cent of the aircraft’s parts, human bones and a wrist watch from the sea bed. A portion of the overall worn by one of the aviators aboard the aircraft too has been retrieved,” SP Sharma, Inspector General, Coast Guard, told reporters at Chennai on Tuesday.
He said the board of enquiry would go through the Cockpit Voice Recorder, Flight Data Recorder and establish the identity of the crew on board of the ill-fated aircraft. The Coast Guard has contacted the Tamil Nadu Forensic Science laboratory to carry out the DNA studies. “We have also requested the family members of the three crew members to be present for confirming the identities of their loved ones,” said Sharma.
The Dornier aircraft with deputy commandants Suresh Subash, MK Soni and Vidyasagar on board, was on a surveillance mission along the Palk Strait between India and Sri lanka on June 8 when it went missing. “The remains of the aircraft as well as the human bones were retrieved from a depth of 950 meters where the estimated pressure of water at the surface is 140 pounds per square inch (PSI),” said Sharma, who also announced that the search operation has been called off since Tuesday.
The Coast Guard IG was all praise for Olympic Canyon, the US ship hired by Reliance Industries which played a crucial role in locating and retrieving the remains from the bottom of the Bay of Bengal. “This is one of the unprecedented search and rescue operations undertaken by the Coast Guard in the last two decades,” said Sharma.
Ships and aircraft belonging to the Indian Coast Guard, the Indian Navy and a host of oceanographic institutions took part in the 36-day long search mission.