India pauses search operation of missing Malaysian Airline MH370

New Delhi, March 16: After the request from the

authority, India has put on hold its search for missing Malaysia Airlines

MH370.

The Kuala Lumpur government wants to reassess the week-old hunt for the Boeing 777 that is suspected of being deliberately flown off course.

The defence official told that India had taken the charge of scanning two areas, one around the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and a second, further west, in the Bay of Bengal. Both operations have been suspended, but may yet resume.

"It's more of a pause," said Commander Babu, a spokesman for the country's Eastern Naval Command. "The Malaysian authorities are reassessing the situation. They will figure whether they need to shift the area of search," he added.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said on Saturday that the plane appeared to have been deliberately steered off course after someone on board shut down its communications systems.

A review of search operations involving more than a dozen countries will be held in Kuala Lumpur on Sunday, Indian officials said.

"The search operation is not over, we are on standby and are awaiting instructions from the Malaysians," said a senior military official in Port Blair, capital of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, an archipelago west of the Malay Peninsula.

The Malaysia Airlines flight with 239 passengers and crew on board vanished mysteriously about an hour after taking off from Kuala Lumpur early morning on March 8. It was presumed to have crashed off the Vietnamese coast in the South China Sea. The 227 passengers on the flight included five Indians, 154 Chinese and 38 Malaysians.

OneIndia News