Eleven crew members of the general cargo ship ITT Puma, registered in Mumbai, were saved by two Indian Coast Guard (ICG) ships and an aircraft when it sank off the coast of West Bengal, India’s Eastern State, while it was traveling from Kolkata to Port Blair. The hunt for the three missing crew members continues despite the severe weather on Sunday, August 25, approximately 7 p.m. IST.
At 4:25 PM on Sunday, August 25, the MV ITT Puma sent out a distress email to the Indian Coast Guard’s Maritime Search and Rescue Coordination Centre (MRCC) in Chennai. ICG Regional Headquarters (North East), Kolkata, dispatched ICG vessels Sarang and Amogh as well as a Dornier maritime patrol aircraft for the search and rescue operations in response to the changing circumstances.
With its sophisticated night-capable sensors, the Dornier aircraft arrived in the region at 7:50 p.m. and started looking for the crew that had gone missing. The helicopter found drifting life rafts and anxious crew members igniting red flares to signal their location in less than twenty-five minutes.
Once visual contact was made, the aircraft guided the ICG ships to the survivors’ location. Upon arrival, ICG vessels observed a pair of life rafts connected by orange canopies. Whistles were observed being waved by the survivors. Eleven crew members were saved in the late hours of Sunday and early hours of Monday as a result of an extraordinary and wide-ranging sea-air coordinated nighttime Search and Rescue (SAR) operation.
The cargo ship MV ITT Puma is reported to have sunk 90 nautical miles south of Sagar Island, off the coast of West Bengal, when it was traveling from Kolkata to Port Blair.
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