Viewed from Malé, the repatriation of the four coffins aboard a Turkish Airlines flight to Milan on Saturday ended a grim two-week wait for families, but far from closing the case, the return of the remains has opened a new, more scrutinising phase. Autopsies are set to begin on Monday at the Gallarate morgue near Malpensa airport, where pathologists will examine the bodies of marine biologist Professor Monica Montefalcone, her daughter Giorgia Sommacal, researcher Muriel Oddenino and graduate student Federico Gualtieri. The fifth victim, dive instructor Gianluca Benedetti, whose corpse was recovered outside the cave shortly after the 14 May accident, was already repatriated. Investigators in Rome, working through the Busto Arsizio prosecutor’s office, are treating the case as potential manslaughter, with attention turning from the tragedy’s immediate circumstances to a hard forensic inquiry.

In parallel, the first images of the underwater labyrinth, taken by a Finnish rescue diver and released by Divers Alert Network Europe, reveal a perilous environment where natural light vanishes within metres, giving way to narrow, sediment-choked tunnels at a depth of around 50 to 60 metres. Such conditions demand specialist mixed-gas breathing mixtures, redundant gas supplies and meticulous planning — equipment that, according to Italian and Swedish press reports, the group may not have fully possessed. Viewed from within the global technical diving community, the failure to carry trimix or sufficient stage bottles for a penetration dive of this complexity would constitute a grave departure from safety protocols. Analysts in London note that cave diving deaths often share a fatal cascade: an initial disorientation leading to silt-out, followed by rapid gas consumption and an inability to find the guideline back to open water.

From the Italian academic perspective, the incident has grown institutionally uncomfortable. Professor Stefano Vanin, a University of Genoa entomologist who was aboard the expedition vessel Duke of York, has told investigators that neither he nor the university had authorised any dives, contradicting earlier suggestions that the descent was part of a sanctioned research mission. The university itself has distanced itself, prompting investigators to sift through email communications — including those of Professor Montefalcone — to determine whether the group acted independently and, critically, what they hoped to achieve in the Dhevana Kandu cave system. This institutional denial, coupled with the equipment questions, frames the event less as a tragic accident and more as an unauthorised venture that may have overridden basic risk assessment.

What remains unresolved, and will likely dominate the autopsy findings, is the precise sequence of deaths. The instructor’s body outside the cave suggests he may have attempted to raise an alarm before succumbing; the other four perished within. The examination of dive computers, cameras and regulators, now in the hands of investigators, could reconstruct the final minutes, while toxicology might reveal whether any cognitive impairment — from narcosis or gas toxicity — contributed. Viewed from Malé, the Maldivian authorities have limited investigative capacity, leaving the central inquiry to Italian magistrates. For a global readership, the case sharpens a persistent dilemma: how to balance the scientific imperative to explore extreme environments against protocols designed to keep researchers alive.