​Lost voice data recorder may cost India Italian marines case - Times of India

CHENNAI: With Italy refusing to send back two of its marines accused of murdering two fishermen off the Kerala coast last February, the focus is on the voice data recorder (VDR) of the marines' ship Enrica Lexie. The dispute may now be played out on the diplomatic stage, but any trial in the case will have to rely on the VDR as the prime source of evidence to ascertain the position of the ship during the incident, conversations and decisions taken at the captain's cabin. VDR is equivalent to the black box in an aircraft, but the comparison ends there. In a flight, even the commander cannot tamper with the black box, which usually throws light on the cause of an accident. In the Enrica Lexie case, the Italian marines argued that they were in international waters and that they had opened fire at a boat think ing they were pirates. This could have been verified from the VDR, but a preliminary probe into the incident found that the VDR was tampered with. While vessels corrupt VDR data often, the Mercantile Marine Department (MMD) of India's director general of shipping has failed to get reliable VDR data in many cases. A DG Shipping official and an expert in maritime electronics and communication says correlating voice data, satellite logs and minute deviations recorded in VDR would have been powerful evidence in the case. "But this data was not retrieved when the vessel was in Kochi. Also, investigators had never chargesheeted the captain for tampering with key evidence," he says. International Maritime Organisation (IMO) insists that vessel captains should archive VDR data in case of any incident, since the data is otherwise overwritten every 12 to 24 hours. On March 19, 2012, MMD principal officer at Cochin, M P John, had told TOI that the investigation did not cover any marine equipment on Enrica Lexie. Terming it as a 'safety investigation,' he said that they did not need to go through any equipment other than normal devices including the Global Maritime Distress and Safety System (GMDSS) and devices for internal and external communication. "Only a crime investigation can probe encrypted devices," he said. Proving the fact that the agency that investigated the crime was unaware of any such evidence on board the vessel, then Kochi police commissioner M R Ajith Kumar told TOI last year that it was for the MMD to submit the technical details of the vessel as police are not experts. "We are yet to get VDR data. Log book details and status of VDR data should be included in the MMD report." But so far DG Shipping has not prepared a detailed report including VDR or any such encrypted communication data from Enrica Lexie. Less than a month after the Italian marines incident, another vessel, Prabhu Daya collided with a shipping boat off the Kerala coast, killing three fishermen. An investigation later found that the VDR of the vessel was corrupted after someone inserted a pen drive into it. "The incidents show that either the voice data recorder is not protected as per protocol or no action is taken against those tampering the data. This means loss of vital evidence and the culprits walking free," s ays an official on condition of anonymity. via Top Stories - Google News http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&usg=AFQjCNGm_z3sLWm_jV88CNJs8-UYUgrg4w&url=http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/Lost-voice-data-recorder-may-cost-India-Italian-marines-case/articleshow/18942389.cms

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