Navy ship returns to base in Port Blair after suspension of rescue operation of MH370

An Indian Navy ship involved in search operations for the missing Malaysia Airlines plane on Monday arrived at the naval base in Port Blair.

India on Sunday had put on hold its search for the missing aircraft, at the request of the Malaysian government, which wants to reassess the week-old hunt for the Boeing 777 that is suspected of being deliberately flown off course

No trace of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 has been found since it vanished on March 8 with 239 people aboard. Investigators are increasingly convinced it was diverted perhaps thousands of miles off course by someone with deep knowledge of the Boeing 777-200ER and commercial navigation.

Malaysia briefed envoys from nearly two dozen nations and appealed for international help in the search for the plane along two arcs stretching from the shores of the Caspian Sea to the far south of the Indian Ocean.

India had initially been combing two areas-one around the Andaman and Nicobar Islands; and a second, further west, in the Bay of Bengal.

Both operations have been suspended, but may yet resume, Indian defence officials said.

Suspicions of hijacking or sabotage hardened further after it was confirmed the last radio message from the cockpit - an informal "all right, good night" - was spoken after someone had begun disabling one of the plane's automatic tracking systems.

But police and a multi-national investigation team may never know for sure what happened aboard the jetliner unless they find the plane, and that in itself is a daunting challenge.

Satellite data suggests the plane could be anywhere in either of two vast arcs: one stretching from northern Thailand to the borders of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, or a southern arc from Indonesia into the Indian Ocean west of Australia.