Missing Dornier: Submarine Sindhudhvaj joins massive search ops

Bengaluru, June 14: The massive search for missing Dornier aircraft of Indian Coast Guard entered into sixth day on Sunday.

Terming it as a ‘continues and uninterrupted' search operation, the ICG officials said on Sunday morning that Indian Navy's submarine INS Sindhudhvaj has arrived at the area, from where a Sonar Locator Beacon (SLB) transmission was picked up by INS Sandhayak.

"INS Sindhudhvaj reported to the area at around 10 pm on Saturday night. It has commenced underwater search to confirm the transmission of 37.5 Khz picked up by INS Sandhayak on Friday," an official said.

ICG officials say that the outcome of the submarine search is expected to be out by late Sunday evening.

To augment the serach operations a separate team from National Institute of Oceanography (NIOT) is heading to the area on board ICGS Vighraha with a black box detector.

"The search probe will be lowered at sea for reception of the signal from the beacon of the aircraft," an official added.

In what can be termed as one of the most expansive search operation of an ICG asset in the recent past, a total of 124 hours have been flown by the ICG and IN aircraft.

The officials have taken the help of the National Remote Sensing Agency (NRSA) Hyderabad to provide with the satellite imagery for analysis of the area to locate the aircraft.

One of the leading wings of Indian Space Research Organisation, NRSA have intimated presence of cloud cover in the most probable area precluding detection of any object on sea surface.

In a related development, ICGS Abheek which is actively involved in the search operation picked up a distress call from fishing boat Indra.

"The distressed fishing boat along with 10 fishermen were rescued and safely brought to Puducherry harbor," the officials added.

OneIndia News