Five Italian scientists and divers entered a submerged cave 50 metres below the surface in Vaavu atoll last Thursday and never came out. Two days later, a Maldivian Coast Guard sergeant died trying to recover their bodies.
With all six dead now recovered, Italian prosecutors in Rome have opened a culpable homicide investigation. The Maldives government has launched its own probe. The MV Duke of York’s licence has been suspended. The University of Genoa has said the cave dive was undertaken privately. The presidential spokesperson has admitted the research permit had “gaps” — including the names of two of the divers who died.
Our explainer pulls together what we now know about the dive, the cave, the recovery operation, the regulatory framework that was meant to govern all of it, and the questions both investigations now have to answer: https://maldivesindependent.com/explainer/the-devana-kandu-tragedy-criminal-probe-regulatory-gaps-and-the-questions-left-unanswered-e441
