India will find the people who attacked Merchant Navy ships “even from the depths of the sea” and punish them, Defense Minister Rajnath Singh said at the launching of INS Imphal on Tuesday. It is the third of four “Visakhapatnam-class” warships that the Navy has built and designed.
“The government has taken the drone attack on MV Chem Pluto in the Arabian Sea, and on MV Sai Baba in the Red Sea, very seriously,” he stated. “The Navy has stepped up its surveillance. We will find the person or people who did this attack, even if they are on the bottom of the ocean.” The people who did it will be punished.
He said that India is the “net security provider for the entire Indian Ocean region” and that the government will “work with friendly nations” to make sure that trade in the area is safe.
The Navy had already said that the MV Chem Pluto had been hit by a drone two days before the comment.
“A one-way attack drone fired from Iran” hit the ship, a Pentagon official said on Sunday.
The attack happened 400 km off the west coast of India. It was one of many by Houthi rebels in Yemen, who are backed by Iran and have been going after the important shipping route in the Red Sea during the war between Israel and Gaza.
The oil tanker MV Chem Pluto, which was with the flag of Liberia, left a port in Saudi Arabia and was on its way to Mangaluru in Karnataka when it was attacked. Some people on board said there was a fire after the drone strike.
The ship and its 21 crew members, one of whom was Vietnamese, arrived in Mumbai this morning. The Navy’s explosive ordnance team then did an inspection. Pictures showed damage to the stern (rear) that could have been caused by an attack from the air, but a forensic analysis is needed to find out more.
A Navy official said that Chem Pluto is now ready to continue its work and will have to go through certain checks before it can move cargo from one ship to another. After this, docking and fixing any damage will happen.
Indian and American military officials say that a drone attacked a second oil tanker in the Southern Red Sea. The ship is registered in Gabon and has 25 Indian crew members on board.
Thankfully, no one got hurt. Three warships, the Mormugao, the Kochi, and the Kolkata, have been sent to the area to act as a deterrent against attacks on commercial ships.
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