Navy ship sinks outside Vizag, one sailor dead

A torpedo recovery vessel of the Indian Navy has sunk outside Visakhapatnam harbour on Thursday evening, killing one sailor.

As four personnel are still missing at the time of filing the report, a massive search and rescue operation has been launched by the Eastern Naval command. As many as 23 persons were rescued to the safety. Rear Admiral A B Singh, fleet commander of the Eastern Naval Command is heading the search operation, which will continue in the night.

Helicopters will fly in on Friday morning to look for signs of those who are missing.  
Navy sources said the auxiliary vessel named TRV (A 72) was on a routine mission to recover practice torpedoes fired by the fleet ships. Suddenly, it experienced flooding in one of the compartments, though what caused the breach remains unknown at the moment.

One sailor lost his life during the rescue operations and four personnel are reported missing, said a Navy spokesperson. A Board of Inquiry has been constituted to investigate the cause of the mishap. The 23-metre-long was built by the Goa Shipyard Limited in 1983 and served the Navy for the 31 years.

It was being used to recover the torpedoes fired by the fleet ships and submarines. Navy chief Admiral R K Dhowan, who is in Seychelles on an official tour has been informed of the mishap.  The accident adds to the long series of woes of Indian Navy which began last year with explosion and sinking of submarine INS Sindhurakshak off Mumbai, killing everyone  on board.

Since then, the maritime force experienced a series of major and minor accidents. In February, then Navy Chief Admiral Devendra Kumar Joshi resigned from his post taking “moral responsibility for the accidents and incidents” involving naval warships in the wake of accident in the submarine INS Sindhuratna.