10 suspected barge victims wash ashore on Maharashtra, Gujarat coast

Mumbai, May 23

Ten unidentified bodies were found at three different locations along the coast in Maharashtra’s Raigad district and Gujarat’s Valsad, police said.

Police suspect they could be of some of the victims of barge P305 that sank off the Mumbai coast in Cyclone Tauktae, a police official said on Sunday.

Out of the eight bodies found on Saturday, five were washed ashore in Mandwa, two in Alibaug and another one in Murud, the senior official from Raigad police said.

“The bodies are yet to be identified,” he said.

Raigad administration and senior officials of the state police have been informed about the bodies, he added.

Two more bodies were found at the Tithal beach on Sunday morning. The police have recovered their identity cards and some documents and further investigation is underway, the official said.

Valsad Superintendent of Police Rajdeepsinh Jhala said six bodies have so far been recovered from two places here in south Gujarat since Saturday evening. On Saturday, four bodies were washed ashore—three on the Tithal beach and one on a beach in Dungri village here.

“From their uniform and life jackets, it appears they are the missing victims of the barge or the tugboat that sank off the Mumbai coast during cyclone Tauktae,” Jhala said.

He said out of the four bodies found on Saturday, one was identified as that of the captain of tugboat ‘Varaprada’ that sank last Monday.

“We are trying to identify the other five bodies,” he said.

Barge P-305, which housed personnel engaged in maintenance work of an offshore oil drilling platform of the state-run oil and gas major ONGC, sank on Monday evening off the Mumbai coast after it went adrift due to the high-speed winds and huge tidal waves caused by the extremely severe cyclone which brushed the Mumbai coast on its way to Gujarat.

Apart from the nine missing personnel of the barge P305, the Navy and the Coast Guard are also searching for 11 missing persons from the tugboat Varaprada.

Of the 13 people on Varaprada, two have been rescued, officials earlier said. — PTI