KOCHI: A special probe team constituted by the Kochi City Police headed by District Crime Branch Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Biji George to investigate the case of hardware devices going missing from the country’s first Indigenous Aircraft Carrier (IAC) under construction at the Cochin Shipyard, has reportedly quizzed the staffs and other workers at the Shipyard on Wednesday.
The probe team is learnt to have quizzed those handling works inside the ship including contract workers. The current investigation will be based on all aspects including the workers in the ship, and they are also figuring out how the device was stolen from such a high security zone, sources said.
Besides, it is also learnt that the internal division of the Cochin Shipyard Limited has also started a parallel investigation into the major security breach.
Meanwhile, sources ruled out sensitive device being present in the ship at that time as it has only electrical and other machineries inducted to the ship. “As the ship building is only under process, there can’t be any sensitive devices posing threat to national security there. We are currently investigating how the incident happened in such a high security zone guarded by the CISF,” sources said.
The sources in the police also said chances of an outside person entering the zone and stealing the device is very low and so they are interrogating each of the officers and workers who were present in the ship for the past few days.
However, they also found that the device was stolen after breaking the computer inside the ship and used gloves in order to avoid fingerprints. Central agencies including the Intelligence Bureau (IB) had visited the ship and conducted the examination. Preliminary probe had revealed the device was present in the ship till August 28.
It was on Monday, a case was registered at the Ernakulam South Police Station that a hardware device was stolen from the high security zone of the Cochin Shipyard. The State Police Chief also had intervened in the issue considering its gravity following which a special investigation team was formed to probe the incident.
The construction of IAC was started in 2009 and is scheduled to be inducted into the Indian Navy in 2021.
