Survivors of MV Faiz back, with a mystery

The 10 survivors of MV Faiz, which went missing on May 31 and was found by the Indian Coast Guard on June 2, were brought to Haldia port thi...

The 10 survivors of MV Faiz, which went missing on May 31 and was found by the Indian Coast Guard on June 2, were brought to Haldia port this morning. Most of them were too traumatised to describe their 72-hour nightmare on the high seas.

Deck Officer Ashok Sen, seniormost officer among them, says on the night of May 31, he had gone to take charge of the bridge from Captain P.B. Shelley. ‘‘We had four-hour shifts, and mine was to start at midnight and end at 4 am,” he said.

‘‘We had done our routine radiocheck with the MV Solomon (another ship of the T T Shipping Pvt Ltd) at 4 in the evening on May 30. That was our last contact with anyone,’’ Sen remembered. The captain, he explained, was sleeping on a settee on the bridge with his eight year old son, Louvin. ‘‘It was Seaman Hamid, on duty with me on the bridge, who first noticed smoke and flames inside the Captain’s cabin a little after midnight,’’ Sen said. Engineer G C Pal saw Captain Shelley force open the door to his cabin, only to be engulfed by the flames. Sen waited for the Captain’s orders to send out distress signals; soon the entire bridge was ablaze.

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Sen then gave the orders for launching the ship’s life raft. ‘‘We drifted on the sea for three days, till the Coast Guard rescued us on June 2.”

Coast Guard had a different view. ‘‘There was very little evidence that enough had been done to douse the flames,’’ said an officer. He added it was surprising that while Sen waited to send out a distress signal, he did not hesitate to give the crew the order to abandon the ship.

The police said that Kumar, a resident of Turbhe MIDC in Navi Mumbai, was driving his concrete mixer truck when it collided with an SUV.

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