Mangaluru: As its already been 22 hours that the Cafe Coffee Day founder and entrepreneur V G Siddhartha has gone missing, after being supposedly last found on the Nethravathi Bridge of Ullal, suspecting he taking a step to suicide, the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), local fishermen, expert scuba divers and two teams comprising of eight expert search operation personnel and swimmers from the INS Kadamba Naval Base, Karwar have now begun their search operations at the suspected spot of Siddhartha being jumped into the Nethravathi River from the bridge above.
Speaking to the media, about the current situation of the search operations, former minister U T Khader said, “The river and ocean has its own natural process of pushing out whatever it has received, to its shores. This natural process takes atleast 24 to 36 hours. Rivers and oceans will never keep anything to itself and will deliver everything to it shores, whatever it has taken in. Hence we are of the belief that we will recover Siddharth’s body soon, if at all he has jumped into the River Nethravathi.”
“Hovercraft boats from the INS Kadamba Naval Base have been deployed as there are chances of pushing up the body from the river bed, if at all the body is stuck somewhere in between. The massive propellers of it will help us push the body upwards, if at all stuck in the river bed”, he added.
Explaining further about the process, he said, “The weather should also be taken into consideration. Due to heavy rains, the inflow of water in the river will be unimaginable and it will definitely obstruct the search operations. Currently, there are no rains and hence we have continued with the search ops.”
“In order to conduct search ops even throughout the night we have ordered for gas lights, search lights, and also required amount of diesel for boats as well as light instrument. If the weather permits, then definitely the search ops will be continued throughout night”, he added.
Recalling his friendly bond with Siddhartha, Khader said, “We do not meet often, but during programmes and functions. We know each other from a very long time. He had recently wished me, after I had won the 2018 Assembly elections. We were in good touch.”
