The MV Ocean Winner search widened on Sunday after the Indian Navy confirmed that a P8I long range maritime patrol aircraft was pulled off a routine surveillance sortie on Saturday to help locate the bulk carrier's liferafts in the Bay of Bengal. Two of the ship's 24 crew have been rescued by the merchant tanker MT AISOPOS; the other 22 remain unaccounted for.

The Navy's account, posted by the Eastern Naval Command, and a separate post from the Andaman and Nicobar Command both confirm details IDW first reported on Saturday from an initial Coast Guard situation report, while adding new ones of their own.

The MV Ocean Winner search widens

Eastern Naval Command said the P8I aircraft was already flying a surveillance sortie roughly 700 kilometres east of Visakhapatnam when it was rapidly redeployed for the search and rescue mission, coordinating with the Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre at Sri Vijaya Puram. The aircraft located geographically dispersed liferafts in the area and directed AISOPOS, which was transiting nearby, to render assistance.

AISOPOS had recovered two survivors from the liferafts by late evening on Saturday.


The Panama flagged Ocean Winner, IMO 9145530, had 24 crew onboard when it lost contact with shore control, twenty Chinese nationals, three Myanmarese and one Bangladeshi. Saturday's report to the Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre came from Victory Star Group Co Ltd, the party linked to the vessel.

An oil slick near the reported position

The Andaman and Nicobar Command's account of the same operation adds a detail the Navy's post does not carry. Sustained monitoring and a focused aerial search by the P8I led to the detection of two floating liferafts and an oil slick near the vessel's reported position, the tri service command said, without stating whether the slick points to the vessel having gone down.

Neither post identifies the aircraft's home base or squadron. The P8I fleet, a militarised variant of the Boeing 737, flies out of INS Rajali in Tamil Nadu and INS Hansa in Goa and carries EO/IR sensors built for exactly this kind of open water search, on top of its usual anti submarine and long range surveillance role. The type has been used in Indian search and rescue efforts before, including the 2017 Cyclone Ockhi response off Kerala and the 2023 search for the sunken Chinese fishing vessel Lu Peng Yuan Yu 028 far out in the southern Indian Ocean.


Two positions for one search

The Eastern Naval Command places the incident about 700 kilometres east of Visakhapatnam. The Andaman and Nicobar Command places it 300 nautical miles north northwest of Diglipur. Neither figure matches the position IDW reported on Saturday, when the ship's last known location was given as roughly 310 nautical miles from East Island light on a bearing of 317 degrees.

The three descriptions are not necessarily incompatible, given how far the search area sits from any single reference point, and Bay of Bengal SAR reports often mix landmark bearings with city distances. None of the accounts has reconciled the others, and IDW could not independently verify which is current.

Four commands, one operation

The Andaman and Nicobar Command said it coordinated the response with the Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre (Andaman and Nicobar), Coast Guard Region Headquarters (Andaman and Nicobar), the Eastern Naval Command and Coast Guard Region Headquarters (Northeast). The Andaman and Nicobar Command is India's only tri service theatre command, built in 2001 to fold Army, Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard assets under one Commander in Chief for the islands.

The Indian Navy said it continues to coordinate closely with the Indian Coast Guard to locate the remaining crew. Vice Admiral Vineet McCarty took over as the command's 20th Commander in Chief in June.

A search that began with a Coast Guard SITREP

IDW's Saturday coverage tracked the operation from the initial distress call, when the Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre at Sri Vijaya Puram lost contact with the carrier and named Indian Coast Guard ships Varad, Anmol and Vijit as the assets committed alongside AISOPOS. Sunday's posts are the first confirmation from either the Eastern Naval Command or the Andaman and Nicobar Command that a Navy aircraft was involved at all.

The P8I fleet has flown missions before under a similarly organised Indian Ocean posture, and the same MRCC network handled a separate Coast Guard medevac off Mumbai earlier this year. The national maritime search and rescue authority that both commands answer to covers all of India's search region, extending well beyond the coastline itself.

The MV Ocean Winner search continued through Sunday, with AISOPOS remaining on scene alongside Coast Guard ships Varad, Anmol and Vijit and the Navy P8I aircraft overhead, all still committed to the area as darkness fell on the second day.