Sheekha Bureau
Port Blair, July 20: IIT Panther a general cargo vessel sank 120 nautical miles off East Island, North Andaman (towards) Kolkata, early this morning.
According to Coast Guard there were 11 crew members onboard when the vessel sank.
“The coast Guard received a distress call at around 6.30 am after which one by one three Dornier aircrafts were sent to locate the vessel but the aircrafts could locate only some floating containers and a life waft, with 11 crew members,” Commandant Dalip Singh, Public Relations Officer, Coast Guard Region (A&N) told Express UNI.
A Coast Guard vessel ICGS Rajkamal was immediately sent for the accident site which reached the spot at around 5 PM and rescued the crew members from life raft.
It is presumed that ITT Panther has already sunk.
According to Coast Guard the reason of sinking was shifting of Cargo load due to bad weather.
It is earlier planned to take the ship to Aerial Bay Jetty, Diglipur North Andaman at around midnight today with rescued crew members but now the Coast Guard is bringing the ship directly to Port Blair, tomorrow morning at around 9.00 AM.
Post rescue, all crew members were provided medical attention and were stabilised. The rescue operation was undertaken by the ships, braving the inclement weather with strong monsoon winds blowing across and waves rising as high as 3-4 metres in the choppy seas.
Commandant Singh said that all the crew members are from India and the owner is from Kolkata, who had received the first distress call from the ship.
The 63-metre long vessel, ITT Panther, was carrying 29 containers, including 500 metric tonnes of sand, 200 metric tonnes of steel and a car.
The ship was coming from Kolkata and her next port of call was Diglipur, where it has to unload some cargo.
The 63 metre long and 10 meter width ITT Panther was built in 1985.
“As part of its charter of duties, the Coast Guard carries out search and rescue operations at sea and the number of these missions increases considerably during the monsoons. In 2017 alone, Coast Guard MRCC has saved 33 precious lives in 18 missions undertaken at sea,” the PRO said.
