India suspends search operations for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370

Malaysian officials said on Sunday they had sought the assistance of as many as 25 countries in the continuing search for the missing Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777. Najib Razak, the country’s Prime Minister, spoke with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the leaders of Bangladesh, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to enlist their help.

On Sunday, agencies reports, quoting a defence official, said that India has suspended its search for Malaysia Airlines flight 370 around the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and in the Bay of Bengal and is awaiting a new request from Malaysia.

“The entire operation is on hold for now. We are awaiting fresh instructions from Malaysia,” said Colonel Harmit Singh, spokesman for the Army, Navy and Air Force command in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

More countries involved The number of countries involved in combing a vast swathe of land and sea, from Central Asia and the Himalayas to the southern Indian Ocean, in the search for Flight 370 has almost doubled in recent days from 14 to 25, Malaysian Transport and Defence Minister Hishammuddin Hussein told a press conference in Kuala Lumpur.

The expansion of the search came as authorities released a map showing likely locations of the last satellite signal received from the Boeing, which suggested, based on the angle of the satellite’s antennae, that the plane’s last position was somewhere on a curved, north-south arc stretching from Turkmenistan to the southern Indian Ocean.

The plane disappeared from radars early on March 8, an hour after taking off from Kuala Lumpur, while over the South China Sea. Investigators believe the plane’s transponders were manually disconnected, and that the “deliberate action” of someone on board had led to the aircraft being diverted thousands of kilometres off course.

Officials said on Sunday they were examining the backgrounds of the 227 passengers and 12 crew on board. Khalid Abu Bakar, the Malaysian police chief, said background checks of passengers had so far not yielded any telling evidence, although more information had been sought from several countries.

Police officers this weekend also searched the homes of the aircraft’s captain, Zaharie Ahmad Shah (53), a veteran pilot with more than 18,000 hours’ experience, and first officer Fariq Abdul Hamid (27).

Officials said they were examining computers taken from their homes, as well as a flight simulator that Shah, an avid aviation enthusiast according to his colleagues, had custom-built at his home.

Further analysis was being carried out as a matter of procedure, although no concrete evidence has as yet cast suspicion on the two pilots.