JOIN USHowever, the 12 crew members of the sinking ship “Tiger Spring” are safe and were rescued, KoPT’s maritime director Arun Kumar Bagchi said. The port trust engineers who already reached the spot, have undertaken the salvage operation as the vessel has already been tilted and could sink if due measures are not adopted fast, he conceded.
But the incident would have no impact on the movement of ship to and from the Kolkata Dock System(KDS) as the collision took place outside the main shipping channel of the river, Bagchi said. According to him, the Tiger Spring, which headed towards the Bay of Bengal after unloading its containers at KDS was hit in the middle by the “Green Valley,” another container coming from Sandheads in the Bay of Bengal. The impact heavily dented the “Tiger Spring” which, according to unofficial reports, had developed some problem in its steering.
Sources quoting East Midnapore police superintendent Ashok Biswas said the “Green Valley” has been detained at Geokhali and its pilot would be questioned by the cops from South 24 Parganas district. Reports said police have not been ruling out the pilot error in the mishap as the “Green Valley” pilot was reported to have wrongly interpreted the approaching path of “Tiger Spring” and presumed that the other vessel would be able to shift its course before his ship would arrive close to it.But his anticipation went haywire and his vessel hit straight in the middle of Tiger Spring, sources said.