Crocodiles could have got the two missing foreigners

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Ian Turton Richard, 45, of Gliwice in Poland and his British friend Michael David Easton, missing after setting out on an adventure trip into the Anchetti forest on the TN-Karnataka border near here Saturday, could have fallen prey to crocodiles, informed sources here said.

A helicopter pressed into search operations located the inflatable raft that they had used to paddle in the crocodile-infested Cauvery on Saturday evening. The raft was found punctured and caught between two rocks in the shallow water at a place known as Megathad near Kanakapura in Karnataka, about 165 km from here. There was a mobile phone in the raft.

“Considering that the water is less than chest-deep, drowning is ruled out. The raft was found punctured, obviously in a croc attack. And the mobile phone found in the raft could only mean that the two men left suddenly, most likely pulled out by crocs, and did not step out for a walk into the woods. The Cauvery here is infested with crocs and it was suicidal for the two men to have tried to enter the river in an inflatable raft”, a source said.

Richard worked at TNNECO in Hosur and Easton had come to work for Bangalore-based Shell. The two friends had motored to Muthathi on Saturday and told their driver Saravanan to pick them from Anchetti. They had also taken an inflatable raft and two life jackets. When he did not find them at Anchetti, the driver presumed they had returned to Bangalore on their own and got back.

The next morning, when he went to the hotel to take Richard to work, he was informed that the guest had not come back. The two firms were alerted and a search was launched by the police and forest officials, in which a helicopter joined on Saturday. The chopper found the raft in the evening, while the two men remained untraced.