MANGALURU: One more person has survived and five others are still missing after a tug boat, assisting a ship to maintain Single Point Moorning (SPM) of Mangalore Refinery Petrochemical Limited (MRPL), drifted about 17 nautical miles away from the New Mangalore Port on Saturday.
The body of one of the worker in the tug boat, 45-year-old Hemakanth Jha a native of Northeast India, was found near Yermal on Saturday evening.
The identity of the third person who survived incident is yet to be ascertained.
Two persons, 34-year old Muneer Mullah and 24-year old Karibul Sheik, from Kolkata had managed to swim and reached the seashore with the help of safety tubes. They were later shifted to the government hospital in Udupi.
Coastal Security Police officer Chethan R told The New Indian Express that that it was MRPL's tug in which nine persons had gone to maintain the SPM.
MRPL issued a statement "We are pained to inform that, one TUG vessel named Alliance, which belongs to Underwater services company Ltd, with nine of their men on board had faced distress on Saturday."
"This company assists us in Cargo unloading near our SPM and functions in coordination with port. Three of the niene men have survived and rest are missing. Our Cargo operation was completed on Friday and the vessel was supposed to are turn on the sameday. However it started only on Saturday morning and had to face distress." the statement further read.
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