Body of sixth victim found

Mumbai: The body of the sixth victim of Saturday’s Pawan Hans helicopter crash, which is yet to be identified, was found early on Sunday. The aircraft — which had seven people on-board, including five Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) officers and two pilots — crashed off the Mumbai coast minutes after it took off for an installation at Bombay High in the Arabian Sea on Saturday.

A forensic expert of the state-run Cooper Hospital’s postmortem centre, who requested anonymity, said that all the six deceased had succumbed to shock and brain haemorrhage.  “The bodies brought to us were in partly mutilated condition. Their autopsies reveal the same cause of death. We have sent samples to the Kalina Forensic laboratory for further evaluation,” he said. The bodies were handed over to relatives later.

In a statement the ONGC said, “Following an extensive search operation, jointly conducted by ONGC, Coast Guard and Indian Navy, six bodies including one of the two pilots have so far been recovered. The search is on for one more person. The bodies of ONGC officials Mr P.N. Srinivasan, Mr R. Saravanan, Mr Jose Antony, Mr Pankaj Garg and one of the pilots, Capt. R. Ohatkar, have been identified.”

Meanwhile, the Coast Guard has located the voice data recorder (VDR) of the ill-fated aircraft. A side-scan sonar (SSS) search conducted by an Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) vessel, TAG 15, helped locate some remnants of the helicopter around 600 yards from the wreckage, and salvage teams are in the process of recovering the remaining debris.

A diving team from Samudra Sevak is preparing to undertake diving operations even as nine ONGC vessels are conducting search-and-rescue operations to locate the remaining debris and bodies.

The Navy’s Talwar-class frigate INS Teg and patrol vessel Tarasa along with Coast Guard ships Samudra Prahari, Achook, Samrat and Agrim have also been deployed for search operations in the area.

“INS Makar, a twin hulled catamaran hydrography ship, has been moved in from Karwar to augment search efforts. These fleet of vessels are being provided with air support by ICG Dornier, flown in from Daman, and the Navy’s Seaking 42B, flown in from Shikra airbase,” said a Navy spokesperson.

The coastal security forces have also kept an extra diving team from INS Teg on standby.