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Indian search for the missing Malaysian passenger plane remained suspended Monday while India could provide radar data to Malaysia to help track the path of the flight of the apparently diverted plane.
Officials at the Information Bureau here said the Indian navy ships and airplanes did not make any sorties since Sunday at the request of Malaysia and it is not known when the search will start again until new instruction is given from New Delhi.
The navy command here had conducted three days of research in the Andaman Sea and the islands in the area for the missing plane, without making any result.
At least five Indian warships and seven military aircraft equipped with high-tech radar and sensors joined the search in an area covering 250,000 square km expanding from the Andaman Sea here to the southeast coast of India.
The next step India might join the search for the missing plane could be providing technical help, namely radar data, to Malaysia to track the possible path of the MH370 plane which has gone missing for 10 days.
Malaysian Premier Najib Razak called Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Sunday evening and requested technical help from India to corroborate the possible paths taken by flight MH370.
In his conversation with Singh, Razak confirmed that they were investigating two possible routes, southern and northern arcs, said officials of the Prime Minister's Office in New Delhi.
Indian high commissioner T. S. Tirumurti and the Indian defense attache in Kua Lumpur attended a meeting Sunday with top Malaysian officials to strategize about the future course of the investigation. Sanjay Bhattacharyya, joint secretary (south) from the foreign ministry has also flown to Kuala Lumpur to attend these meetings, said Indian officials.
Speculation remains that the missing plane could have taken a northwest route from the Malaca Strait toward central Asia. In this case, it might have flown over India's Andaman islands and Bay of Bengal, if not entering India's mainland airspace.
However, Indian military experts have ruled out the possibility of the plane entering the airspace of India without being detected.
Lt. General Ramesh Chopra (rtd) told Xinhua that such an eventuality is highly unlikely to take place as India has a strong radar system consisting of both civil and military radars.
Moreover, if it not possible that such a large plane could not be seen by someone either in the air or through radar if it landed somewhere, he said.
Razak also called Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif with a similar request. Pakistan is one of the countries which could have been on the presumed northward flight path of the diverted airplane.
