The MV Ocean Winner was carrying iron ore from Odisha to Singapore when it disappeared from tracking systems nearly two days after leaving Paradip Port. Twenty of its crew members are Chinese, three are Myanmarese and one is Bangladeshi. Twenty-two crew members remain unaccounted for.
Officials said the vessel sank about 240 nautical miles off the Odisha coast. The ship had departed the Paradip coast at 10.42 pm on August 20, carrying 72,100 mt of iron ore fines bound for Singapore. Indian Coast Guard and Indian Navy units launched a rescue operation after the vessel’s disappearance, with the search continuing across a wide area of the Bay of Bengal.
The Indian Navy and Indian Coast Guard have since intensified efforts to locate the missing crew members and establish the status of the vessel. The operation was expanded after a distress alert was received concerning the MV Ocean Winner, which was located about 290 nautical miles from Paradip Port.
An Indian Navy P-8I aircraft, which had been conducting a surveillance sortie, was redeployed for the search and rescue mission in coordination with the Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre at Sri Vijaya Puram. The aircraft detected a geographically dispersed life raft in the area and coordinated with the merchant vessel MT AISOPOS, which was transiting nearby, to provide assistance.
By late evening on August 22, MT AISOPOS had rescued two of the 24 crew members from the life raft. The Indian Navy subsequently continued coordinating closely with the Indian Coast Guard as the search proceeded for the remaining 22 crew members.
The vessel, described as approximately 225 metres long and 32 metres wide, had reportedly been carrying around 71,000 metric tonnes of iron ore bound for Singapore. The source information also states that the ship had departed Paradip Port three days earlier and had gone off its tracking system after being detected moving in the Bay of Bengal on Thursday.
The disappearance of the vessel’s tracking signal has raised concerns about what may have happened at sea. Authorities are considering the possibility of a technical malfunction, an emergency situation or another incident, although the available information does not establish the cause of the vessel’s disappearance.
An Indian Coast Guard source said standard procedures are immediately initiated whenever a vessel disappears from surveillance and tracking systems. These procedures are intended to determine whether the loss of the signal resulted from technical failure, intentional disabling of the Automatic Identification System, or an emergency at sea.
With only two crew members rescued so far, the operation remains focused on locating the remaining 22 people and determining the fate of the Ocean Winner. The disappearance of the vessel has turned a routine voyage from Odisha to Singapore into a major maritime search and rescue operation in the Bay of Bengal.
