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Journalism of Courage
MUMBAI, July 7: Bad weather has forced the Coast Guard and the Navy to abandon the search and rescue operations to locate the bodies of Captain H Mazumdar and co-pilot P Balsara, whose Fokker 27 cargo aircraft had crashed off Madh island on Thursday.
According to Coast Guard sources, heavy rains and windy conditions made it difficult for divers to search for wreckage on Sunday. No work was conducted today.
The cockpit voice recorder or black box’ of the converted 19-seater aircraft owned by Elbee Courier company is yet to be found. However, the senior officials of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation, New Delhi including the Director, Air Safety, V K Chandna, presently in Mumbai, are still hopeful of finding the black box.According to Ashish Nain, chief executive officer, Elbee Airlines, the company is hiring the services of the Indian Remote Sensing agency, Hyderabad, to assist in the search for the black box in addition to hiring private professional divers. It will begin work tomorrow.However, the crash has not affected Elbee’s courier operations, as the company has a spare aircraft, informed Nain. Of the cargo lost at sea, “less than ten per cent”, mainly shares of blue chip companies like Tisco and TVS, has been recovered. The process to compensate the loss of shippers is currently on, he added.
