Sleuths to seek aid of translators

Kochi, July 18 (UNI) The investigators questioning the crew members of the grounded Taiwanese vessel ''Isabel III'' in Lakshadweep have not been able to make much headway due to language problems and are going to seek the help of interpreters, top police officials said.

A senior officer of the Lakshadweep Police told UNI that only one of the 33 crew members could speak broken English while the others did not know English at all.

''We have not been able to get much information from them and have sought help from government agencies on the mainland to get some interpreters, who know Chinese or Taiwanese,'' he added.

The questioning of the ''Isabel III'' crew was undertaken by a joint team of investigators from the Lakshadweep Police, the Coast Guard and the Intelligence Bureau yesterday.

The crew members, consisting of 12 Filipinos, 12 Chinese, four Taiwanese, three Vietnamese and two Indonesians were lodged in the India Reserve Battalion camp at Kavaratti, where they were airlifted on Sunday afternoon.

The crew had abandoned their deep sea fishing vessel on Sunday, when it started tilting after running aground a coral reef on Saturday night.

Senior Coast Guard officers here however said that prima facie, it appeared that the ship had run aground a coral reef near the uninhabited Suhaili island on Saturday night due to ''navigation error''.

''It seems to be an innocent passage. They were heading for Singapore from Oman when a navigation error appeared to have caused the accident,'' they said.

A joint team of the Lakshadweep administration and the Coast Guard would undertake an aerial survey of the scene of the mishap today, where the vessel was stranded. It was tilting at almost 60 degrees. Due to rough seas, it was difficult to launch any salvage operations at the moment, the Lakshadweep Police said.

So far, there were no signs of any oil spillage from the vessel, which was carrying about 190 tonnes of marine diesel, the sources added.

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