The Turkish authorities are learnt to have informally told Indian shipping officials that they suspected a maritime fraud behind the disappearance of Rezzak.
No clue of 25 Indian crewmen, vessel carrying $3million steel billets
MUMBAI: The Turkish authorities are learnt to have informally told Indian shipping officials on Monday that they suspected a maritime fraud behind the disappearance of Panamanian merchant vessel Rezzak along with 25 Indian crewmen in the Black Sea early on February 18.
There is no official word about mv Rezzak or the fate of its crewmen — hired by Churchgate-based manning agency Pelican Marine — even 13 days after it went missing off the Turkish coast. DNA had reported on February 29 that the authorities concerned had sounded Interpol’s Ankara unit suspecting foul play.
Captain Deepak Kapoor, deputy director general of shipping (technical), said they could not dispute claims made by Turkish authorities that a maritime fraud may be behind Rezzak’s disappearance. “But there’s no concrete information so far regarding the fate of the 25 missing crewmen and that’s paramount for us,” he said.
Indian embassy officials in Apartado (Panama), Ankara (Turkey), and Moscow (Russia) are coordinating with the Turkish authorities, it is learnt. An international-level initiative is being mounted to trace the missing ship.
The DG Shipping has also instituted its own investigation into the case and is set to send one of its officials from Mumbai to Turkey soon.
In most maritime frauds, sources said, high-value cargo (in this case the steeply-priced steel billets) is sold off and the ship is ‘scuttled’ and its austenitic body sold off as scrap. The task cannot be accomplished without the connivance of some of the crew members, the sources said.
Rezzak had left Novorossiysk in Russia on February 17 with steel billets worth around $3 million and was to reach Bartin in Turkey the following morning.
Well-placed sources in the shipping ministry and the Directorate General of Shipping said the fraud theory gained credence after it was revealed that none of the three 'ship-shore' communication devices on the Rezzak had functioned. A DG Shipping statement on March 1 said the automatic identification system on the Rezzak, registered in Panama, was switched off and the ship's owner may have been tracking the ship via a GPS system. Surprisingly, other sophisticated gadgets like the Global Maritime Distress and Safety System and Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon had also failed.
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