New Delhi/Visakhapatnam: The families of those on board the missing AN-32 aircraft of the IAF have been informed that their relatives are “presumed dead” as the search operations for the ill-fated aircraft continued. There were 29 people on the transport plane which had vanished over the sea after it took off from Chennai for Port Blair on July 22.
“The Court of Inquiry, upon very careful scrutiny of the circumstantial evidence available and in light of extensive search and rescue operations carried out, has concluded that it is unlikely that the missing personnel on board the ill-fated aircraft would have survived the accident.
However, the relatives of civilian employees from Visakhapatnam who were on board the aircraft denied receiving any information.
Mr E. Kiran Kumar, a relative of R.V. Prasad Babu, who was on the aircraft, said that some Navy personnel visited their home on Thursday and informed that a ship from Japan would join the search operations. “They did not inform us that our relatives were presumed death. We are still hopeful,” he said.
