MUMBAI, MARCH 7 : With a second and more intensive search for the missing cargo ship M V Rezzak and its 25 Indian sailors also proving to be futile, investigators said on Friday that they were zeroing in on the possibility that it could have become a victim of piracy. The ship was reported missing in the Black Sea on February 18, a day after it set sail with steel billets from Novorossisk in Russia to Bartin Limani in Turkey.

Initially, the vessel was suspected to have sunk in bad weather and questions were raised about its sea-worthiness. The Directorate-General of Shipping (DGS) had also said that investigators had found a life raft and some buoys from M V Rezzak.

Today, the DGS for the first time said that “based on fresh inputs from various sources”, it was in touch with the International Maritime Bureau, Piracy Reporting Centre, Kuala Lumpur, and is pursuing them to trace the whereabouts of the vessel and the crew”.

P Mukundan, IMB’s director for ICC Commercial Crime Services in London, said his office had begun probing the matter, adding it was too early to say what may have happened.

“We are now closely monitoring the case. Piracy is rather unusual in the Black Sea, but now due to the circumstances around the missing ship, since we have not found any trace of the ship or the crew yet, we are keeping an open mind. At this stage we are looking at all possibilities,” he said.

Officials said investigators also needed to probe why M V Rezzak had been detained by port authorities in Novorossisk for more than two weeks before it set sail and whether the ship was expected to reach Bartin at all on February 18. One senior official involved with the investigation in Turkey said that the ship had been inspected twice at the Russian port, adding that “it was an old ship and not in good condition”.