The basis for ship breaker Arihant to claim that it had performed its job of clearing the River Princess was a survey by Hydro Scan Survey which gave an all clear.
The basis for ship breaker Arihant to claim that it hadperformed its job of clearing the River Princess was a survey by Hydro ScanSurvey which gave an all clear. The Goan investigates how the survey itself wasflawed, the result of which is now public. Much of the debris and parts of theMV River Princess lie dangerously lie on the sea bed. And yet the government iscontemplating entrusting the same Arihant, to compete the job they tried toprove they had finished. Here’s a stage by stage behind the scenes breakdown ofthe cover up
NIO Observers mislead but truth exposed – The GoaGovernment’s request to NIO’s Chief Scientist Dr AK Chaubey and NationalInstitute of Hydrography’s Cdr. R M Thomas seemed like a formality with noserious intent. It came less than a day before Hydro Scan Survey was to conductthe survey of Candolim Coast to check if there were any remains of thepresumably removed River Princess.
When the NIO team landed at Candolim coast on May 31, theirjob was only to verify how they were collecting the data and check whether itwas being done as per scientific norms. Goa Government had requested theirservice for just four hours. The survey team did not heed to the scientist’squery to give them the coordinates of their path over the wreckage. HydroScan’s tug that was conducting the survey refused to venture close to thewreckage site citing shallow waters.
However NIO’s Dr Chaubey had quietly placed a black box thatcontained a Global Positioning System which recorded the tracks of the surveytug. Back in his office in the evening, Chaubey printed out the tug’s path andknew on day one that the tug was surveying a place which was way off the RiverPrincess’s site.
Disputable data: After the physical survey of the operation,NIO’s Chaubey and NIH’s Thomas were provided with collected data from HydroScan survey to supposedly establish that the Hydro Scan Report was correct.While NIH’s Thomas was inaccessible to The Goan, NIO’s Chaubey reveals that itwas wrong data that was fed to them. “We already knew that the survey was notconducted along prescribed path, what was even more confusing was that the datathat they provided did not have any references nor were they given the way theyshould be” explains Dr. Chaubey, pointing out to an image of side-scan sonar ofthe site conducted by Hydro Scan. The survey does not show latitude andlongitude of the area that is being surveyed under water. The survey could havebeen of any sea on the earth and hence confusing and disputable.
NIO survey exposes River Princess debris on the sea bottom:Months later when NIO conducted the same surveys including bathymetry,sub-bottom profiling and side scan sonar it revealed the sunken remains of thepartially cut ship. NIO’s report states “Unusual, sharp spikes in theecosounder records indicate a disturbed seafloor. Such anomalous variations ofwater depth are apparently caused by the ship wreck”. The contention, that onlymagnetometry can reveal that metal lies at the bed, is an additional confirmation.
The then Tourism Director Mathew Samuels insisted on NIOverification: The faith in NIO’s ability to nail the truth came from thenTourism Director Mathew Samuels, who in his short tenure, insisted that HydroScan’s scientific survey and data be verified by men of science. But wheneverNIO raised a red flag, Hydro Scan did everything in its’ capacity to scuttlethe truth. NIO’s Chaubey recalls when he had asked for the survey path duringHydro Scan’s Survey on May 31, there was no help from the surveyors. But theordeal for truth started thereafter. “Whenever we asked them to give the datain a prescribed format, they would give us weird almost gibberish andunscientific data. “Despite repeatedly pointing out when an agency keeps onmaking the same mistakes, getting suspicious about their intentions is natural”he adds.
Last quest for truth: When first, the survey and then tworounds of data solicitation by NIO and NIH observers did not convince them, theTourism Department held a meeting on August 9 where Arihant and Hydro Scanrepresentatives, besides NIO and NIH observers were called to thrash outissues. Interestingly, Arihant’s owner A K Jain too was present but his namedoes not figure in the minutes of the meeting. It was NIO’s Dr Chaubey who decimatedthe farcical Hydro Scan survey explaining how the survey and its findings didnot make any sense.
Finally, over to NIO, but Arihant doesn’t give up: OnOctober 9, the Goa Government quietly requested NIO to resurvey the area. ButArihant did not let go. On October 23,it requested the Goa Government to delay NIO’s survey so that they could do onemore survey. NIO started its survey two days later. Its conclusion as reported above. Sunkenremains of the River Princess are still at the sea bottom. Arihant’s blatantuntruths were finally dug out.
