Rundu — Police divers are busy with an underwater search to recover the body of a 31-year-old man who never returned home after going to the river to do laundry and take a bath.

Initial suspicions are that Andreas Mayira from Ndongo village either drowned or was attacked by a crocodile. Mayira was last seen on Saturday around 11h15, and was reported missing on Sunday at the Mukwe police station in eastern Kavango.

NamPol's Regional Crime Investigations Coordinator in the region, Deputy Commissioner Willie Bampton, says members of the police's water wing were dispatched to the area where the victim was washing his clothes, to search for the body.

The family started enquiring about his whereabouts at nearby homesteads to no avail. They then went to the river where they found some of his clothes washed and drying on the shrubs along the riverbanks. The clothes he was last seen wearing and his sandals were lying on the ground but Mayira was nowhere to be seen.

Police suspect that he might have opted to take a bath after he finished washing his clothes. Bampton says police investigations will continue into the matter. By the time of going to print yesterday, Mayira's body was not recovered yet.