Spl diving teams to look for 26 missing
The Indian Navy on Saturday dispatched two specialised diving teams from Mumbai to augment the search for 26 missing crew of a barge and tugboat Varaprada that sank during Cyclone Tauktae on Monday.
The teams on board INS Makar, which is also equipped with a side-scan sonar, and INS Tarasa sailed out early morning on Saturday from Mumbai, said commander Mehul Karnik, chief public relations officer of the Western Naval Command.
The barge was deployed at an unmanned platform in Heera oil fields, one of the largest ONGC rigs in the Arabian sea. As Cyclone Tauktae hit the Mumbai coast, the barge got de-anchored on Sunday night.
The barge sank around 7 pm on Monday in a very choppy sea and rough weather, which made the search and rescue operation one of the most challenging operations undertaken by the Navy in four decades.
Afcons Infrastructure, which leads the consortium that chartered the barge and hired its crew, said there were 261 members on board. The barge sank about 40 nautical miles west off Mumbai.
The Navy and the Coastguard have so far rescued 286 barge crew members and recovered 60 bodies.
The search is going on for the remaining 15.
On Monday afternoon, INS Kolkata rescued two crew members of the tugboat, Varaprada. Varaprada too is believed to have sunk during the cyclone.
DNA testing of 30 bodies to establish identity
Struggling to establish the identity of 30 of the 61 victims of P-305 barge tragedy, police have initiated the process of conducting the DNA testing of the bodies, an official said on Saturday.a Mumbai police spokesperson said the Navy has so far recovered 61 bodies from the Arabian Sea and handed them over to the city police.
Barge P-305, which housed personnel engaged in maintenance work of an offshore oil drilling platform of state-run oil and gas major ONGC, sank on Monday evening off Mumbai coast during the cyclone. The barge had gone adrift in the cyclone fury before sinking.
“Police have handed over the bodies of 28 victims to their families after post-mortem. However, the identity of 30 victims is to be established…while some bodies are decomposed, some others have deep injuries and therefore they are beyond recognition,” the official said.
In view of this, police have decided to get the DNA testing of the bodies done, he said.
Accordingly, the blood samples of the deceased and their immediate relatives are being collected and sent to the Forensic Science Laboratory at Kalina in Santracruz here, he said.
“After the samples are matched, the bodies will be handed over to the respective family members,” he said, adding that the DNA sampling process is expected to complete in the next three days.
Besides this, RT-PCR test to ascertain whether these victims had contracted the Covid-19 infection, was also conducted on them, he said. NEW DELHI: