Giglio, Italy, Jan 16: All 300 Indians aboard the sinking cruise ship off the coast of Italy are safe and there are no casualties among them, Indian Ambassador to Italy Debabrata Saha said on Monday.
All 300 were crew members, he added. Meanwhile, 6 people have been reported dead and 15 are still missing.
Over 4000 people were on-board the luxury cruise ship, Costa Concordia, which hit rocks near the Italian coast on Friday night and started sinking.
The Indian ambassador said all Indians were safe and the embassy officials were closest to the place of the shipwreck.
"They would be providing all possible assistance to the Indian nationals who are on the ship. Fortunately, there are no casualties among the Indians. The Indian nationals are crew members of the cruise. The Indian Embassy would be providing all assistance and would take the next course of action as per the Indian nationals' wishes."
Meanwhile, the ship's captain has been accused of manslaughter. He, however, defended his actions, blaming faulty charts for the mishap.
"I don't know if it was detected or not, but on the nautical chart it was marked just as water at some 100-150 meters from the rocks and we were about 300 meters from the shore, more or less. We shouldn't have had this contact," he said.
Sunil Aggarwal, Consular, Indian Embassy, Rome, meanwhile, said: "What I got from the matter is that I have to go to the base and render all assistance needed by the crew members and Indians there. Assistance is whatever they require... in case they require travel documents for travel to India, most probably they must have lost their travel documents in the ship or in case they require money.
"The second thing which I have heard that they want is to intervene with the shipping lines about their salary. They're only crew members, that is my information. The people from the shipping line have taken care of their accommodations I'm told. Haven't heard that there is any sort of emergency to any of the Indians there."
