Chennai: The wife of the co-pilot of a missing Indian Coast Guard Dornier aircraft on Tuesday urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to pay `attention` to the search operation.
The Dornier aircraft took off from the Chennai airport at around 6 pm on June 8 for a surveillance sortie but was reported missing on its way back.
Taking to microblogging website Twitter, Deepa Subash sent a tweet to the Prime Minister's Office, saying:
@PMOIndia 8 days since my husband Subash Suresh pilot of CG791 missing. Request your attention #FindSubash pic.twitter.com/PAt8HEHq3m
— Deepa subash (@deepa_subash) June 15, 2015
Deepa, who created an account on Twitter on Monday, began a campaign 'Find Subhash'. The couple has a baby.
@subashsuresh89 Cone home back.. We are waiting for you..
— Deepa subash (@deepa_subash) June 15, 2015
The family has created a similar campaign on Facebook as well.
It also reminisces how he was named after freedom fighter Subash Chandra Bose. Now, the family members hope he returns home unscathed and does not meet the fate of the leader after whom he was named.
"Subash's father Suresh likes Subash Chandra Bose. And he named his son after the freedom fighter," his mother Padma Suresh told a news agency.
"We are sure he will come back alive. His friends from different cities have come here to lend us the moral support," she added.
"Subash joined the Coast Guard in 2009 and has logged around 1,500 hours of flying. He was a gold medallist in his batch," she said.
The 1985 born mechanical engineer decided to go for a pilot licence instead of doing an MS.
"Even as a child he had a passion for flying. He wanted to do the pilot course. We also agreed. He went to the US and completed the course," said Padma Suresh, holding back her tears.
"On his return he wanted to serve the nation first before joining a commercial airline as a pilot and joined the Coast Guard in 2009 on short commission. He would have come out of Coast Guard in 2017," she said.
He is very much interested in sports, movies and has lots of friends.
"Whenever he is at home, his friends would also be there," she said.
She said the Coast Guard is doing their best in trying to locate the missing aircraft.
"We are positive about his safe return. We do not want bad energy affecting the family and others by crying. It is not that we do not cry at our situation. But we are hoping for the best. We are sure he will come back," the brave mother said.
The search for the missing aircraft and its three-member crew entered the eighth day today with no concrete information so far about its location.
"The submarine operations continued for detection of acoustic signal from the sonar locator beacon of the missing aircraft. Feeble/sporadic signals received are being reconfirmed by probe equipment of the National Institute of Oceanography (NIO) deployed aboard an ICG (Indian Coast Guard) ship," the Coast Guard had said on Monday.
The aircraft manufacturer was also being roped in to help ascertain the reason(s) for its disappearance, a Coast Guard official has told a news agency.
The last contact with the aircraft was at 9 pm last Monday. Its last known location, as per Trichy radar, was off Karaikal in Puducherry where it was tracked till 9.23 pm, 95 nautical miles south of Chennai.
In March, a Dornier-228 of the Indian Navy with three crew went down in the Arabian Sea off the Goa coast, killing two personnel.
The Coast Guard requested Reliance India Ltd to extend the services of a multi-support vessel with remote-operated underwater vehicle for underwater search.
Besides co-pilot and Deputy Commandant Subash Suresh, the missing Dornier had on board Deputy Commandant Vidyasagar as pilot and navigator/observer MK Soni -- all in their 30s.
(With IANS inputs)
