Missing Dornier: Reliance's vessel joins search

With Olympic Canyon, the Reliance India-owned ship, which is integrated with a Remotely Operated Underwater Vehicle, is now joining the search and rescue mission for retrieving the Coast Guard’s Dornier aircraft, which went missing on June 9. The Indian Coast Guard is undertaking the biggest-ever maritime operation in the history of the country, according to a top commander of the ICG. 

“In addition to Olympic Canyon, ten ships of the Indian Navy and CG, aircraft and helicopters of the IN, ISF and the CG are also working round-the-clock to salvage the missing aircraft,” VSR Murthy, Deputy Director General (Operations and Coastal Security), told The Pioneer on Friday.He said the Reliance India has loaned the ship Olympic Canyon free of cost to the ICG for the search and rescue mission. “In normal circumstances, an advanced ship like this would charge `90 lakh per day for search operations,” he said. Referring to the withdrawal of the research vessel Sagar Nidhi owned by the NIOT from the search operations, Murthy said both the Indian Navy submarine and NIOT’s Sagar Nidhi  could not be deployed at the same area at the same time. “Sagar Nidhi takes 50 hours for scanning a 1kmX1 km area which makes it slow and time consuming,” said the Coast Guard boss.

Murthy said the claim by one of the fishermen that he saw a fireball falling into the sea around the same time as the aircraft went missing, was found to be inconsistent. “We probed the matter and found that there is a gap of nearly two hours between the claim of the fisherman and the last point of contact made by the aircraft with the Tiruchirappalli air traffic control.

“We are not ruling out any proof submitted by public. For us, each input is valuable and we are working on whatever claims furnished by the fishermen or others,” he said.The Coast Guard boss said he was hoping against hope that the crew, on board the aircraft, were safe.  Underwater operations of any kind take a long time due to a host of reasons. But we are confident of coming out with a result at the earliest now that the Reliance vessel too has joined us,” he said.