Body of missing Andhra Pradesh techie recovered

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Looking blankly towards the turbulent sea from the muddy steps at the entrance of the Coastal Police Station in Vizhinjam on Tuesday morning, Praveen had almost given up hope of seeing at least the dead body of his younger brother Vinod who had accidentally slipped from a rock along the coast and was taken away by the waves on May 8.

The wait had entered its fourth day, and search and rescue efforts had been hampered by the heavy rains over the last two days. The unstable weather had also forced scuba divers to postpone their search operations by a day.

A day earlier, local fishermen had told Praveen to forget about the body if it had not been found floating by the third day.

But after 3.15 pm, a relative came up to Praveen and told him that Vinod’s body had been spotted by a coast guard vessel.

“They had sent us a WhatsApp picture from the vessel. It is Vinod, the same colour t-shirt,” the relative said. Praveen, a 28-year-old engineer at Cognizant, Pune, remained silent. He did not ask to see the picture. He had the lost wild look of a man who was unsuccessfully trying to look sane. A policeman said that it would take another three hours for the body to reach as the sea was rough. “On Saturday morning he had called me up and said we will meet at our home on May 23,” Vinod said.

His 26-year-old brother’s body was spotted floating eight nautical miles,  north from the place where he had fallen, near the rocks below the Vizhinjam Bollard Pull Facility. Vinod, an engineer with Tata Elxsi, was in the city for a 15-day work on a project.

Vinod’s body is now kept in the Medical College. After post-mortem on May 13, it will be flown to Hyderabad.