Visakhapatnam: Weapon’s officer of the Naval Armament Inspection Office of Eastern Naval Command (ENC) attached to NSTL, Lt Commander Y. Shishir Kumar, 32, who was on board the sunken TRV and who is still missing, had offered his life vest to an NSTL scientist as part of his duty as a defence personnel: civilians first. He was deployed by ENC to inspect the testing of torpedoes developed by NSTL. On Friday, NSTL director C.D. Mall-eswar visited Shishir’s home to meet his family.

The need for Lt Commander Y. Shishir Kumar, weapon’s officer of the National Armament Inspection Office of Eastern Naval Command (ENC), to offer his life vest to another person has raised questions regarding the availability of these vests on the Torpedo Recovery Vehicle (TRV) and whether there were enough preparations in place on the vessel to handle so many persons.

Ms Rohini Kumar, the wife of Shishir has been working in a public sector bank in Vizag for more than two years and Shishir had shifted to Vizag from a defence organisation at Sunabeda in Odisha only two months ago on a transfer to join his family.“He is very good at swimming and he had offered his vest to one of the NSTL staff as he knows that as a defence personnel, it should be ‘civilians first’. He truly lived up to his duty. This was revealed by one of the NSTL staff who were rescued. Shishir saw that NSTL staff were rescued first. Shishir is a brave man. We wish and hope he comes back,” a colleague of Shishir told this correspondent.

“I know Shishir since some years. He is a very nice, humble and helpful man. I wish he comes back,” his neighbour, retired Master Mariner A.K. Ghosh, told this correspondent.

Even as the Indian Navy has instituted a Board of Inquiry to investigate into the reasons that led to the sinking of the vessel, there have been reports that the mishap took place due to ill maintenance of the vessel, which had led to corrosion of the plates of the steering compartment where the initial flooding started. Questions are also being raised whether a TRV can carry so many persons.

The Torpedo Recovery Vessel, which sank 35 nautical miles off the Vizag coast, was carrying scientists and technical officers of the Naval Science and Technological Laboratory, who went along with the two naval ships for testing torpedoes, developed by the premier defence laboratory.



Sources in the NSTL said that the mishap took place while coming back after successful completion of the torpedo testing. Since the mother-ships, from where these torpedoes were fired, were not so far away from the TRV, the NSTL scientists could be rescued.



The scientists were afloat with life vests for around half-an-hour until they were rescued by the ships. The crew members of the TRV had first provided life vests to the NSTL staff and pushed them to the other side of the vessel from where it started sinking. The crew then dropped the NSTL staff with the vests for them to be afloat until the rescue ships arrived.



NSTL is involved in the designing of underwater weapons and their associated weapon control systems like torpedoes, mines, decoys, targets, simulators, fire control systems and weapon launchers.



Last year, NSTL had established a state-of-the-art integration centre in Vizag to develop Electrical Heavy Weight Torpedoes for its prestigious Varunastra project.

“The plan was that the mother-ships from where these torpedoes are fired and tested in the sea will sail off to their destination and our scientists and other technical officers will come back to the shore on the TRV. As they boarded the TRV, the mishap took place. The testing mission was successful and everyone was happy” a NSTL senior officer told Deccan Chronicle.



Of the 24 rescued, most of them belong to NSTL and the remaining are crew members of the TRV. Dead sailor James Jacob and three others, who went missing, are also part of the crew of the TRV.



Generally a TRV is manned by 13 crew members including an officer of the Indian Navy. One of the missing was identified as weapon’s officer of the National Armament Inspection Office of Eastern Naval Command Lt Commander Shishir Kumar Y, 35, who inspected the testing of the torpedoes developed by NSTL in Vizag.