MH370: India to resume search for missing plane

The Indian government officials on Wednesday said Malaysia had sent a fresh request for its help in the new designated search area stretching 5,000 nautical miles southwards from Jakarta.

"One P-8I is already on stand-by at the naval air station at Arakkonam in Tamil Nadu, while another C-130J is positioned at Port Blair," The Times of India reported quoting an unnamed official.

"Both planes, with long endurance, can scan the designated area with their radars, electro-optic and infra-red sensors. They are likely to begin operations on Thursday morning to cover the area spanning 5,000 nautical miles from Jakarta towards Antarctica," he added.

India had earlier joined the ongoing hunt by over 25 countries for the missing Malaysian Airlines 777-200ER aircraft by deploying six warships and several planes to search an area spanning over 250,000 sq km in the Andaman Sea and Bay of Bengal.

However, its operations were suspended after Kuala Lumpur decided to rethink and redirect the efforts on Sunday, with Malaysian Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak also calling on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for technical help and radar data to corroborate the possible flight paths taken by the missing plane.

The Indian military establishment has rejected the possibility that the jetliner, hijacked or otherwise, could have flown over its mainland after being "diverted" to Kazakhstan-Turkmenistan in Central Asia, as reported by an English daily earlier.

This came after Saturday when Najib had declared that the plane's last communication with a satellite suggested it could have been "deliberately diverted", after its transponders were switched off, into "two possible corridors or arcs".