A navy source said that India will bring in and prosecute 35 Somali pirates that it caught on a ship that was hijacked off the coast of Somalia. This is different from what India has been doing lately, which is to save ships and crew but leave the disarmed pirates at sea.
A government source said that the pirates who were caught will be brought to India on Saturday and given to the police. He wouldn’t give his name because he wasn’t allowed to talk to the reporters.
He also said that the exact charges against the pirates were not clear at the time.
On Saturday, commandos from the Indian navy were able to free the commercial ship MV Ruen, which was captured by Somali pirates 450 nautical miles east of Socotra in the northern Arabian Sea on December 14.
It was the first time since 2017 that Somali pirates took over a cargo ship. At the height of their strikes in 2011, Somali pirates stole about $7 billion from businesses around the world, including hundreds of millions of dollars in ransom payments.
Indian pirates who were involved in big attacks used to be prosecuted and jailed in India by the navy. But in recent months, the navy has started leaving the pirates at sea. The source also said that India will be prosecuting the Ruen pirates for the first time in years.
Since December, India has put at least a dozen warships in the Gulf of Aden and the northern Arabian Sea. This lets it help ships east of the Red Sea, where the navies of several countries, including the US, are trying to protect shipping routes that are being attacked by Houthi militants in Yemen.
The Indian source said that since the Ruen was taken over, the navy has been doing “continuous surveillance activities” in the area using its aerial platforms and information from other ships it has been looking into.
Ambrey, a British marine security company, said that Ruen was seen off the coast of Somalia on March 14.
A navy source said that the pirates had turned Ruen into a “mother ship” and were attacking other ships from boats. The navy said in a statement on Saturday that it was caught on March 15.
Last week, the MV Abdullah, another cargo ship, was taken over off the coast of Somalia. Somali forces were planning to attack with foreign navies.
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