Hopes to find survivors of ONGC mishap nose dive

Rescuers fail to find survivors on Friday

The hope of finding survivors in the ONGC mishap diminished further on Friday when rescue workers failed to trace the victims or recover any bodies during search and rescue operations. Rescue workers had on Thursday recovered three more bodies of crew members of the ill-fated Samudrika-10 that went down on July 9.

Rescue experts fear that the remaining four seamen including the captain, Gurcharan Singh Chahal, may have been trapped inside the sunken vessel.

The rescued nine workers told the authorities that the tragedy happened so fast that there was little time to think or plan anything. “The water gushed in at such a high speed that the vessel went down in just 10 minutes,” said Harish Awal, ONGC spokesperson.
Kartik Menon, the spokesperson of SICAL, the company that operated the vessel, told DNA from Chennai that though three bodies were recovered on Thursday rescuers could not find any survivors on Friday. The victims were identified as Vivek Kumar, a seaman and Sukanta Bannerjee, the vessel’s cook.

Meanwhile, search and rescue operations were still continuing to trace the four missing seamen employed by SICAL Logistics Limited.

The company had renewed its contract with ONGC in June this year. Under the Rs126-crore contract, valid for a period of three years, the company operates 17 offshore supply vessels on contractual and maintenance basis, the ONGC officials revealed.