Navy torpedo recovery vessel sinks off Visakhapatnam coast: 1 sailor dies, probe ordered
Visakhapatnam: The Navy on Friday ordered a Board of Inquiry into the sinking of a Torpedo Recovery Vessel off the Visakhapatnam coast on Thursday night that left a sailor dead and 4 missing.
In view of the incident, Navy Chief Admiral R K Dhowan, who is on a four-day visit to Seychelles till November 9, is cutting short his visit to reach Visakhapatnam, Navy officials said.
While one sailor was killed, four others are still missing in the accident and a search and rescue operation is on to trace them.
Deputy Commissioner of Police, G Ramgopal Naik said on Friday that the deceased has been identified as James Jacob, 26, from Kerala.
Naik further said the list of four missing persons and those rescued has not been provided yet. The body of the dead sailor is at the naval hospital and will be shifted to King George Hospital for postmortem.
Naik informed that a case has been registered under section 174 of CrPC and investigation is on.
After receiving a distress call from the sinking vessel, several naval ships were pressed into action for rescue operation.
The vessel was on a routine mission to recover practice torpedoes fired by fleet ships during a routine exercise, when it experienced flooding in one of the ballast compartments.
Navy officials said the Board of Inquiry will look into the various aspects of the accident and find out what led to the sinking of the 31-year-old vessel.
The vessel had sunk at 8 pm on Thursday night while it was on a "routine" mission to recover practice torpedoes fired by fleet ships during a "routine" exercise, a Navy statement had said.
The vessel experienced flooding in one of the compartments, they said.
"One sailor has lost his life during the rescue operation and four personnel are reported missing. Twenty three personnel have been rescued safely by the Search and Rescue (SAR) ships dispatched to the area," it said.
TRV is an auxiliary vessel, which is used to recover practice torpedoes fired by fleet ships and submarines. The ship is 23 meters long and 6.5 meters at the beam. The ship was built by Goa Shipyard Ltd in 1983 and has served the Indian navy for the last 31 years.
While the Astravahini-class TRV is supposed to be manned by a 13 member crew, the sunk vessel had 28 on board.
The TRV 72 sank in depth of about 370 meters. At that point of time the ship was about 35 nautical miles south off Visakhapatnam coast and 28 nautical miles from the closest point of the coast.
A sea king 42c helicopter with night vision capability, Dornier and Boeing P-8I aircraft along with half a dozen Naval ships have been deployed to assist in the search and rescue operation for the missing sailors.
The latest accident is one of the many in the series that the Navy has witnessed over the last year.
Dhowan took over as the Chief of the Naval Staff on April 17 after his predecessor D K Joshi quit in the wake of a series of accidents.
Admiral Joshi's resignation came immediately after a fire on the INS Sindhuratna, which left two sailors dead.
On October 31, INS Kora suffered minor damage after it was scraped by a merchant vessel near Visakhapatnam.
