Eight sailors rescued from sea off Mangalore coast

The Indian Coast Guard personnel rescued eight sailors on board a crude oil tanker that was caught in the rough seas off the Mangalore coast on Saturday.

According to Coast Guard Commander Manoj V Baadkar, the sailors on board Abdul Kalam Azad, a vessel transporting crude oil from Mumbai to Mangalore, sent a distress call after its helmsman Madhusudan Paul, 55, was washed overboard when he was trying to repair the pilot ladder.

Though the sailors immediately rushed to the rescue of Paul by using a life-boat, they could not return to the ship despite their best efforts in view of the turbulent waves.

Immediately after receiving the distress call, the Coast Guard pressed its fast patrol vessel Kasturba Gandhi into service to rescue the sailors who were struggling to keep afloat in the high seas five nautical miles off the Mangalore coast. “We managed to successfully save all of them. Though the rescue team too had to face rough seas, all the sailors of the oil tanker were rescued and brought to the shore”, Baadkar added.

After reaching the coast, Madhusudan Paul, a resident of Hooghly in West Bengal, who had accidentally fallen in to the sea while repairing the pilot ladder, was admitted to a local hospital.

The New Mangalore Port Trust too assisted the Coast Guard personnel in the rescue operation by deploying its vessel Varahi to tug the stranded oil tanker. The Port officials managed to anchor the tanker, which would be de-fuelled soon.

According to the Coast Guard officials, the rescued sailors have been identified as Chief Officer Vikrant Vikram, Engineer A C Dalal, besides crew members Qamarul Haq, Siraj Ahmed, Anil Ghosh and A A Bagarkar.

The rescue of sailors on board the crude oil tanker comes close on the heels of the drowning of one sailor when a Eritrean freighter Den Den, carrying 23 persons, sank off the Mangalore coast recently.