The special investigation team probing the case of theft on board the under-construction Indigenous Aircraft Carrier (IAC) at the Cochin Shipyard has made some progress and is trying to net the culprit, inevitably an insider, very soon, according to Vijay Sakhare, Inspector General of Police, Kochi range, and Kochi Police Commissioner.
Refuting television reports that he had submitted to the State Police Chief a report on the investigation, Mr. Sakhare said the probe was being reviewed daily and the SPC was kept informed of the developments. “It is an insider job for sure and the hardware components that have gone missing are standard computer components available in the market,” he said.
A top naval officer said that whoever had stolen the hard disk and a few cards that were part of the mammoth Integrated Platform Management System (IPMS) of the carrier could at best make a PC out of it.
“These devices are available off the shelf in the market. This is not going to hold up the project nor affect its security,” he said.
An IPMS is a system used for monitoring and controlling a platform’s hull and its mechanical and electrical systems.
Another officer said that rather than the data on the hard drive what’s even more disconcerting was the fact that there was a security breach on the high security premises of the yard with a functional material movement monitoring procedure.
While the shipyard, a listed company, remained tight-lipped on the theft, which came to its notice on Monday, Central agencies like the Intelligence Bureau and the NIA have also begun to check if there’s more to it than meets the eye. “ Prima facie , it looks like a simple theft. After all, it is a vessel that has not been commissioned,” said an official.
There is also suspicion that business rivals would have engineered this to dent the business prospects of the yard.
