THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Titan disappeared into the abyss with one week to the completion of 44 years since the disappearance of MV Kairali, one of the mysteries in the history of Kerala. Even today, MV Kairali is known as Titanic of Kerala. On June 30, 1979, the Malayali ship MV Kairali left Goa with 20,583 tons of iron ore, bound for Rostok in East Germany via Djibouti port in Africa. Kerala Shipping Corporation purchased the vessel MV Oscarsord and renamed it Kairali. 49 lives were lost with the ship that day. The inquiry commission report put the number of missing persons at 51.

During the first three days of the voyage, messages were received from the ship. Kerala Shipping Corporation left a message to the vessel but there was no response. Kairali was supposed to arrive in Djibouti, northeast Africa, on July 8 to refuel, but on July 11, the shipping agent in Djibouti informed that the vessel had not arrived. Navy planes circled for days but to no avail.

The weather was calm at the time of the ship's disappearance. Experts say that since the iron ore was kept in a special way in the ship following safety measures, there was no possibility of the iron ore moving to another side and capsizing the ship.

Being a large ship, it is less likely to sink without leaving a wreck. No cargo or oil was found floating on the seabed. There were also allegations that the ship had been hijacked by Somalian pirates. It was pointed out that there are possibilities of hijacking the ship and changing its shape or dismantling it and selling it. At least one piece of evidence is left behind to convince the world of the reason behind any accident or murder, but MV Kairali disappeared into the sea without leaving behind any evidence. In 2017, Jomon T John decided to make Kairali's story into a movie with Nivin Pauly as the lead. The film, which was announced to be scripted by Siddharth Siva, did not happen.