Naval divers on Friday recovered the body of Lieutenant Abhinav Nagori from the wreckage of a Dornier surveillance plane, three days after it crashed into the Arabian Sea off the coast of Goa.
The co-pilot’s body was found in the plane’s fuselage lying on the seabed at a depth of 50 metres. The black box was also recovered, ending a 60-hour search operation.
On Thursday, divers had recovered the body of Lieutenant Kiran Shekhawat, an observer, from the wreckage.
Shekhawat is the first female officer to have been killed in a naval crash. The navy’s hydrographic vessel, the INS Makar, detected the Dornier’s 16-metre long fuselage using its side scan sonar on Thursday.
The navy is now firming up plans to retrieve the wreckage, a source said.
The pilot, Commander Nikhil Kuldip Joshi - a seasoned hand with over 4,000 flying hours - miraculously survived the crash and was picked up by a fishing boat. This is the first Dornier to crash since the planes were inducted in the navy in the early 1990s.