Several pings have been picked up over the Bay of Bengal during the search for the missing An-32 but there is no breakthrough yet, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said on Tuesday.
“As of now, there is no confirmed finding, but wherever there were small leads — there were four to five blinks which were noticed — we are trying to find out whether they are misleading or whether they have some meaning,” Mr. Parrikar said in response to questions in the Rajya Sabha.
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However, he said no resources had been spared in the efforts and “everything is with time.”
“We have used satellite imagery. We have used surveillance. We have used P-8i extensively. We have used almost about 30 ships, including the Coast Guard, the Indian Navy and the Merchant ship. The submarine is already in the area,” Mr. Parrikar elaborated on the efforts.
Several leads While several possible leads were noticed in the area of probability, none of them had yet yielded any positive location of the missing aircraft.
In the five days since the aircraft went missing with 29 personnel, there has been no trace of the Personal Locator Beacon (PLB) or the Emergency Locator Beacon (ELB).
“The PLB is active for 48 hours after which it becomes sporadic and can remain for few days. Both the ELBs on the aircraft are located inside and they may not have been activated,” one officer monitoring the situation told The Hindu .
GSI’s help sought With time running out of hand, additional resources are being pressed in to comb the undersea area and the sea bed. Coast Guard officials said the assistance of the Geological Survey of India had been sought for deployment of their oceanographic research vessel Samundra Ratnakar for sub-surface search.
‘Seabed profiling’ “In addition, services of the National Institute of Ocean Technology research vessel Sagar Nidhi has been requested for conducting seabed profiling,” Coast Guard said in a statement.
In addition, INS Nirupak is scheduled to be deployed on Wednesday with an autonomous underwater vehicle and camera embarked to augment the search along with the 16 ships and 20 aircraft already on duty.
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