{"id":16946,"date":"2026-03-13T13:29:40","date_gmt":"2026-03-13T00:29:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=16946"},"modified":"2026-03-13T13:29:40","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T00:29:40","slug":"remains-confirmed-as-ferzil-babu-who-disappeared-almost-two-years-ago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=16946","title":{"rendered":"Remains confirmed as Ferzil Babu, who disappeared almost two years ago"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Human remains located on Coppermine Island (Mauipane), east of Whang\u0101rei have been identified as belonging to a person who went missing in May 2024.<\/p>\n<p>He had been fishing at The Gap &#8211; a popular, but sometimes treacherous, fishing spot at Taiharuru.<\/p>\n<p>On 20 December 2025, a member of the Department of Conservation contacted police after finding the remains on Coppermine Island (Mauipane).<\/p>\n<p>The remains have since been examined by a pathologist, anthropologist, and ESR scientists to assist the police with identification.<\/p>\n<p>Following the examination, the human remains have now been confirmed as those of missing person Ferzil Babu, who went missing while on a fishing trip at The Gap, Taiharuru on 1 May, 2024.<\/p>\n<p>Police have since spoken with Babu&#8217;s family to inform them of the finding.<\/p>\n<p>The\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/national\/515895\/body-of-one-of-two-missing-fishermen-found\">body of a second fisherman who accompanied Babu on the fishing trip<\/a>\u00a0was recovered two days after they disappeared.<\/p>\n<p>Sarath Kumar, 37, had been working as a nurse in Whang\u0101rei Hospital&#8217;s emergency department.<\/p>\n<p>Police said they extended their sympathies to his loved ones at a difficult time.<\/p>\n<p>Source: RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Human remains located on Coppermine Island (Mauipane), east of Whang\u0101rei have been identified as belonging to a person who went missing in May 2024. He had been fishing at The Gap &#8211; a popular, but sometimes treacherous, fishing spot at Taiharuru. On 20 December 2025, a member of the Department of Conservation contacted police after [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":16947,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16946"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16946\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16948,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16946\/revisions\/16948"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}