Shirur landslide: Navy divers commence search for missing Kerala lorry driver

Indian Navy divers from the Karwar naval base undertook diving operations in the Gangavali river in Karnataka on Wednesday to search for Kerala lorry driver Arjun and two others who went missing following a landslide at Shirur village in Uttara Kannada district close to a month ago.

According to a defence ministry statement, the naval divers recovered parts of a truck during their diving operations.

“Presence of significant debris, heavy boulders, trees etc that are piled up on top of the probable positions, and this may require dredging. The diving and survey teams from the Indian Navy continue to remain deployed in Shirur and are coordinating their search efforts closely with the district administration.

“The Indian Navy remains committed to supporting the search operations until all objectives are achieved and normalcy is restored,” the statement said.

It further said that the Navy began the diving operations on the request from the Karwar district administration.

It also said that diving operations were possible due to reduced river currents and extensive imagery analysis undertaken using underwater sonars.

Arjun has been missing since July 16 after his lorry carrying timber was swept into the river in the landslide.

The Kerala government had sought the Union Defence Ministry’s urgent intervention in the rescue operations by providing additional help from the Indian Navy, which has expert personnel who can do deep diving and substantially help in the search for Arjun.

Earlier this month, it had also requested the Karnataka government to resume the search operations.

Full-fledged search operations were resumed on Wednesday by the Navy, National Disaster Response Force along with other agencies after a gap of over two weeks.