Miracle girl survives tsunami on a door
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-12-29 14:18

Meghan Rajshekhar, 13, disappeared along with 77 other people when the giant tsunami struck an Indian air force base by the sea on the remote Car Nicobar island.

Locals found her walking in a daze along the beach on Tuesday after clinging to a door on the stormy seas for two days, the Hindustan Times reported Wednesday.

The air force officer's daughter and her parents were swept away along with countless thousands others as a massive earthquake off neighbouring Indonesia sent tsunami crashing across the Indian ocean.

"She told defence personnel that she had cried out 11 times when choppers hovered over the ocean in search of survivors on Sunday," the daily quoted a flight lieutenant Bhandarkar as saying.

"No one spotted her."

But Meghna, badly bruised, told rescuers she knew which direction land lay and just kept floating on towards the shore.

"In the end it was the waves that washed so many thousands of others away that washed her ashore," the Hindustan Times said.

"This was a miracle in the midst of the disaster the tsunami wrought," the air base station commander V. V. Bandhopadhyay told the Press Trust of India.

The miracle girl also had to keep an eye out for numerous sea snakes.

Meghna was taken to the Andamans capital Port Blair and on to relatives in Hyderabad after medical treatment, Lieutenant Governor Ram Kapse said.

"Her parents, sadly, haven't survived."

The 76 others are still reported missing.

PTI said 100 people perished at the base.

At least 4,000 lost their lives on the Andamans chain of 572 islands, but many thousands more are feared dead, officials say, as rescuers struggle to reach remote islands.

Car Nicobar was very badly hit and the air base severely damaged.

The Nicobar group lies about 150 kilometres (90 miles) from Sumatra.

The Andamans, 1,200 kilometres (745 miles) from mainland India, are spread over 800 kilometres (500 miles) with a population of about 350,000.

Close

Today's Top News     Top World News
Chinese aid joins world tsunami rescue         Tsunami toll rises to 68,000; aid teams arrive         43 Chinese missing in Phuket after tsunami         FM: Lee's visit a blow to China-Japan ties         State to speed up public info flow         Banquet to raise money for the poor	Asian tsunami toll approaches 60,000       Thousands more US troops sent to Baghdad       Yushchenko calls for blockade in Ukraine       25 die in string of Iraq insurgent attacks       Syria dismisses insurgent aid accusations       Saudi forces kill 3 suspected militants