NEW DELHI, January 12. /TASS/. An Indian Air Force An-32 military transport airplane was found at the bottom of the Indian Ocean in the Bay of Bengal eight years after it mysteriously went missing, the Indian Ministry of Defense said in a press release.

Fragments of the An-32, which was reported missing in 2016 along with 29 persons on board, were discovered during deepwater research by the National Institute of Ocean Technology, the ministry said. The search was performed at a depth of 3,400 meters using an autonomous underwater vehicle that was able to take images of the airplane as it lay at the bottom of the Bay of Bengal.

"The search images were scrutinized and found to be conforming with an An-32 aircraft. This discovery at the probable crash site, with no other recorded history of any other missing aircraft report in the same area, points to the debris as possibly belonging to the crashed IAF An-32," the ministry noted.

The An-32 fragments were found about 310 km off the coast of Chennai. The transport aircraft took off from the Tambaram air force base on the morning of July 22, 2016 and was to land in Port Blair, the capital city of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Sixteen minutes after takeoff, the pilot reported that everything was okay, but that would be the last contact with the plane. "Large scale Search and Rescue operations by aircraft and ships could not locate any missing personnel or the aircraft debris," the ministry added.