NEW DELHI, Jan. 12 (Xinhua) -- India's defense ministry Friday said debris of a missing Indian Air Force (IAF) An-32 aircraft was found after seven years.
The debris has been located at a depth of 3.4 km about 310 km off the Chennai coast.
The IAF aircraft with 29 personnel on board went missing over the Bay of Bengal on July 22, 2016. However, the large-scale search and rescue operations by aircraft and ships for weeks could not locate any missing personnel or aircraft debris.
The National Institute of Ocean Technology which functions under the aegis of the ministry of earth sciences, had recently deployed an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) with deep sea exploration capability at the last known location of the missing An-32. This search was conducted at a depth of 3,400 meters using multiple payloads, including a multi-beam SONAR (Sound Navigation and Ranging), synthetic aperture SONAR and high resolution photography, the defense ministry said in a statement.
"Analysis of search images had indicated the presence of debris of a crashed aircraft on the sea bed approximately 140 nautical miles (310 km) from the Chennai coast," it added.
According to the ministry, the search images were scrutinized and found to be conforming with an An-32 aircraft.
"This discovery at the probable crash site, with no other recorded history of any other missing aircraft report in the same area, points to the debris as possibly belonging to the crashed IAF An-32 (K-2743)," the ministry said. ■
