On Monday, July 31, a 64-year-old woman vanished, falling off the Spectrum of the Seas Royal Caribbean cruise ship.
Reeta Sahani and her husband Jakesh Sahani were on a cruise trip from Malaysia to Singapore.
Jakesh Sahani, 70, woke up in the middle of the night to find his wife not in their cabin.
Upon the ship’s detection system identifying an overboard incident, the Maritime Rescue Coordination Center was informed at approximately 7:50 am Monday, leading to an immediate search and rescue operation in the Singapore Strait, according to the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore.
The Spectrum of the Seas, a gigantic ship with a capacity of around 4,900 passengers, was returning from a four-day round-trip cruise to Malaysia.
Reeta’s son, Apoorv Sahani, 39, who was not on the cruise, had expressed doubts about the suspicion that his mother jumped overboard. He believed there is a chance she might still be on the ship, possibly “stuck” somewhere. Finding it hard to believe that she intentionally went overboard, Apoorv Sahani urged access to the ship’s CCTV footage to clear up the situation.
Speaking to a news outlet, Apoorv said that his mother, who hailed from India like the rest of the family, was not a swimmer and was on the cruise to enjoy her holiday.
After reviewing the footage, Apoorv, who is a businessman residing in Australia, was able to confirm his mother’s death. “With the footage we have unfortunately learned that my mother has passed away,” he wrote.
This event is not the first of its kind for Royal Caribbean. In June, a 42-year-old woman was rescued after falling off another one of the company’s ships, Mariner of the Seas, while on a trip from Florida to the Dominican Republic.