Side scan sonar deployed to find missing SUV

PATNA: The National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) along with a technical team of Uttarakhand government on Sunday started afresh searching the SUV afresh, which had fallen from Mahatma Gandhi Setu into the Ganga on July 31. The NDRF team is using highly sophisticated ‘side scan SONAR’ and ‘underwater drone’ to find the SUV.
NDRF deputy commandant Bala Chandran said the equipment were borrowed from Uttarakhand which they had purchased as a part of modernizing its State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) after the 2013 Kedarnath deluge that had killed thousands of pilgrims and residents.

“For the first time, such sophisticated equipment are being used in Bihar for any search operation,” he said.

NDRF second-in-command Ravi Kant said the five-member technical team of Uttarakhand SDRF reached Patna on Saturday evening. Till now, all conventional search operations conducted till 20km downstream in the river for locating the SUV remained futile.

What was initially thought as an accident has turned into a suspected suicide by 14-year-old Adarsh Singh, a Class XI student of a noted private school in the city. Police, on circumstantial evidence, strongly suspect that Adarsh had intentionally driven the vehicle from the bridge into the swollen river. Adarsh had mysteriously sneaked out of his residence at PC Colony under the Kankarbagh police station area at around 3.16am on July 31 in the SUV owned by his father Vipin Kumar Singh. He had sent a goodbye message to his mother on WhatsApp at 5.16am and his SUV’s registration number was captured in an ANPR camera at the bridge around the same time.

“The equipment are mainly used by military and researchers, including oceanographers, for locating shipwrecks, treasures and for mapping sea floor or riverbed. We hope to locate the SUV soon through it,” an NDRF man involved in the search operation said. He said side scan SONAR, using ultrasonic soundwaves, creates an illuminated image of the river or seabed with a dark centre line, making every object along with contours of the of riverbed visible.

“In one stretch, it covers several metres and any invisible item either due to depth or mud becomes visible through it,” he said.