The Indian Navy on Friday foiled a pirate attack on an Iranian-flagged fishing ship off the coast of Somalia, rescuing the crew of 11 Iranians and 8 Pakistanis.
According to a statement from the Indian Navy, the piracy attempt on the fishing vessel FV Omari was detected by an Indian surveillance drone. The Indian patrol vessel INS Sharda responded and found seven armed pirates holding the crew of the Omari hostage.
The Sharda was able to use its helicopter and boarding craft to “coerce” the pirates into releasing the fishing crew unharmed and returning control of the ship.
Indian Navy spokesman Vivek Madhwal said the Sharda “undertook confirmatory boarding on FV Omari to sanitize and check on the well-being of the crew who had been held captive by the Somali pirates.”
Indian Defense Minister Ajay Bhatt told Parliament on Friday that increased naval and aerial surveillance has been deployed in the Central Arabian Sea and off the east coast of Somalia to combat piracy.
Bhatt said the Indian Navy is also operating in the Gulf of Aden and the north Arabian Sea to protect merchant vessels.
Indian warships rescued two other hijacked vessels within 36 hours this week, one of which was another Iranian fishing vessel. Indian Navy press releases often mention “sanitizing” the recovered ships, but can be somewhat vague about exactly what happened to the Somali pirates.
The Seychelles also reported dispatching naval forces to rescue six Sri Lankan fishermen on Sunday after they were captured by gunmen off the coast of Somalia.
Indian officials said on Wednesday they have monitored 250 commercial ships over the past two months and investigated at least 17 reports of hijacking, attempted hijacking, and suspicious approaches to ships at sea.
India does not have a heavy presence in the Red Sea, which is menaced by the Iran-backed Houthi terrorists of Yemen, but it patrols the waters east of there with at least ten warships.
India declined the opportunity to join the U.S.-led Operation Prosperity Guardian to counter Houthi attacks on cargo ships and tankers. In mid-January, the Indian Navy rescued a U.S.-owned merchant ship called GENCO Picardy from a Houthi drone attack.
Indian Foreign Minister S Jaishankar said on Wednesday that India is projecting naval power to demonstrate that it is a “good neighbor” to the region.
“We will not be considered a responsible country when bad things are happening in the surrounding country and we say, I have got nothing to do with this,” Jaishankar said while promoting his book on Indian strategic policy, Why Bharat Matters.
“Bharat” is another name for India derived from the Sanskrit language, which the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist BJP Party have been trying to get the rest of the world to use, without much success.
Maritime policy expert Abhijit Singh of the New Delhi-based Observer Researcher Foundation told Time on Friday that India “faces a predicament in the Red Sea,” because it wants to “protect commercial shipping from militant attacks,” but wants to avoid getting pulled into a major confrontation with the Houthis and their patrons in Iran.
The Indian Coast Guard intervened in December to project a merchant vessel called MV Chem Pluto that was attacked off the Indian coast by an Iranian-built suicide drone. An Indian Coast Guard ship accompanied the Chem Pluto to port in Mumbai after the attack, and the Indian Navy sent three more guided-missile destroyers into the Arabian Sea.
Jaishankar went to Tehran to lodge a complaint after the MV Chem Pluto attack, informing his opposite number Hossein Amirabdollahian that “this fraught situation is not the benefit of any party and must clearly be recognized.” India’s fears that the Red Sea crisis could spill over into the territory it patrols are obvious.
“India, by some accounts, is keen to assist the U.S. in countering the Houthi threat – even if New Delhi remains undecided about joining the U.S.-led coalition in the Red Sea,” Singh concluded.
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