Massive search on for four missing navy crew members
NEW DELHI: Four crew members of the naval vessel that sank off Vishakhapatnam on Thursday night are still missing and the navy has set in motion a massive search to find them.
One sailor was killed when the torpedo recovery vessel (TRV) went down due to suspected ingress of sea-water into the vessel’s engine room and aft steering compartment as one of the seals gave way.
Of the 28 personnel onboard the vessel, the navy has so far rescued 23. Navy chief Admiral Robin Dhowan is cutting short an official visit to Seychelles to reach Vishakhapatnam on Sunday.
A navy spokesperson said nine warships and four aircraft were scouring “thousands of square nautical miles” in the Bay of Bengal to trace the missing personnel, including an officer.
The navy has been dogged by a string of mishaps during the last two years, with Admiral DK Joshi resigning on February 26, accepting moral responsibility for some of the accidents.
The TRV, built by Goa Shipyard Limited in 1983, is lying on the seabed at a depth of nearly 350 metres. A senior navy officer said salvaging the old vessel would be a complicated task. The navy has ordered a probe to establish what went wrong. The TRV is a 23-metre long auxiliary vessel which is used to recover practice torpedoes fired by ships and submarines.