DENPASAR, Indonesia: Indonesian prosecutors yesterday sought a jail term of three years and six months for a boat skipper who lost track of seven Japanese women during a diving trip that left two of them dead.
Agustinus Brata Kusuma lost sight of the women near the resort island of Bali on February 14 when a storm hit suddenly.
Five of them were saved after clinging onto coral reefs for three days some 20 kilometres (12 miles) from their take-off point.
Kusuma, who is accused of negligence causing death and injury, admitted at a recent hearing that after searching for around an hour for the women, he left the location to get more fuel.
“The captain of the boat should have been paying attention to the safety of the Japanese divers.
But he didn’t do that as he left them to buy fuel, so when they came to the surface the boat wasn’t there,” prosecutor Ni Nyoman Martini told the Denpasar District Court. — AFP