Two more naval ships and a National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT) vessel are set to join the massive operation to locate the missing Coast Guard Dornier aircraft which continued without any headway for the third day on Thursday.
Naval submarine INS Sindhudhwaj and survey Ship INS <g data-gr-id="15">Sandhayak</g> fitted with sonar equipment will arrive shortly to aid search operations for the missing CG plane and its three crew members, a top official said. “While the submarine is expected to arrive tomorrow late night, the other ship (<g data-gr-id="16">Sandhayak</g>) with side scan sonar will join our search efforts midnight today,” Inspector General S P Sharma, Commander, Coast Guard (East), Chennai, told a news agency. “We have requisitioned the services of <g data-gr-id="12">a NIOT</g> research vessel to <g data-gr-id="11">join</g> the search operations and it will be arriving at the search area as soon as possible,” he said. Besides, agencies including the ISRO’s Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC) and Hyderabad-based Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Service are pitching in to help locate the aircraft.