A day after a mishap on board its submarine INS Sindhuratna, the Indian Navy confirmed that two of its “missing” officers were dead and their bodies had been located in a compartment of the vessel, which returned to the Mumbai harbour on Thursday morning.
“The two officers who were earlier declared missing have been located in the compartment and after examination by medical officers, both the officers were declared dead,” a statement from the Navy said.
The Navy identified two of its officers killed in Wednesday’s mishap as lieutenant Commander Kapish Munwal and lieutenant Manoranjan Kumar.Shortly after the return of INS Sindhuratna to the Mumbai habour in the morning, the proceedings of a high-level inquiry, set up under an officer of Rear Admiral rank, began.
Having ventilated the submarine INS Sindhuratna and located the bodies of two “missing” officers, the inquiry panel is now going about its main assigned task of establishing the cause of a spate of mishaps involving the submarines in recent months and to recommend steps for continuing safe operations of submarines.
The Russian-origin Kilo Class submarine INS Sindhuratna was at sea off Mumbai coast for a routine training and workup (inspection), when the mishap took place on Wednesday morning.
At around 6 am on Wednesday, smoke — coupled with fire — was noticed in the sailors’ accommodation — in compartment number three — of the submarine. The personnel on board the submarine brought the smoke under control.
While extinguishing controlling the smoke and fire, seven crew members inhaled smoke and felt uneasy. Before long, the Western Naval Command (HQ WNC) rushed a Seaking Helicopter with a medical team. The seven crew members were air-lifted to the Naval Hospital INS Asvini, where the evacuated sailors are recuperating from the illness. There were in all 92 personnel on board INS Sindhratna.
The bereaved family members of two Navy officers, whose bodies were located in one of the compartments of the mishap-hit submarine on Wednesday morning, are in the city to collect the bodies of their near and dear ones.
Wednesday’s was the second major submarine disaster reported from the Mumbai coast in the recent past and tenth such mishap involving an Indian Navy warship since August last year.
Hours after Wednesday’s mishap, Navy Chief Admiral D K Joshi resigned from his post, after taking moral responsibility for a spate of accidents involving the naval warships in the recent months.
The last major disaster had struck INS Sindhurakshak at 0010 hours of August 14, 2013 when a low-intensity explosion rocked the vessel, followed by two major simultaneous explosions that in turn sparked a huge fire inside the diesel-electric submarine, trapping all 18 on-duty sailors. All the 18 Navy personnel were killed in the mishap.
The following were some of other mishaps involving the Indian Navy warships witnessed since August last year: On December 23, 2013, four persons were injured when a fishing trawler sank after colliding with Navy’s frontline frigate trawler INS Talwar near Ratnagiri district in Maharashtra’s coastal Konkan region.