JOIN USThe Navy will on Saturday deploy its submarine INS Sindhudhvaj to look for Coast Guard’s Dornier aircraft, which remained untraced four days after it went missing over Bay of Bengal with three members of the crew on board.
Official sources in the Ministry of Defence said that INS Sindhudhvaj would join the search on Saturday. The INS Sandhayak — a survey ship of the Indian Navy — has already joined the search operations in Bay of Bengal and, according to MoD officials, started using its underwater equipment to detect transmissions emanating from the Sonar Locater Beacon of the missing aircraft.
The Dornier aircraft of the Indian Coast Guard went off the radar at 9:23 pm on Monday during a routine surveillance mission along Tamil Nadu coast and Palk Bay after it took off from the Chennai. The MoD on Friday sought assistance of the National Remote Sensing Agency for analysis of satellite imagery of the area to help trace the missing aircraft, according to a statement issued by the government.
The Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services in Hyderabad has been asked to undertake SAR model programming for the missing aircraft and to identify the Most Probable Area. The National Institute of Ocean Technology in Chennai has been approached for oceanographic analyses of the area around the datum and feasibility of deploying their Research Vessel ‘Sagar Nidhi’ for augmenting the subsurface search. A team from M/s Omcar Foundation, Thanjavur has been embarked on board ‘ICGS Sarang’ for undertaking underwater photography and acoustic survey, official sources in the MoD said.
Aerial search by Paramotors through Coastal Security Group of Tamil Nadu was undertaken 30 kilometres south of Cuddalore on Thursday, along the coast over marshy mangroves, which is not approachable by sea, the MoD statement added.
DH News Service