Most experts will tell you that once a merchant ship is hijacked by pirates, it is almost impossible to mount a rescue operation because the lives of hostages are at stake. In most cases (similar to aircraft hijacking), quick on-scene decisions are not taken. Local authorities usually await instructions from the concerned government.

But recently, the Indian Navy and Indian Coast Guard (ICG) jointly succeeded in neutralising two Somali pirate threats in the Indian exclusive economic zone (EEZ) without any “back seat driving” from South Block.
Piracy off the Somalian coast has been ongoing since 2005. Increasing pressure from about a dozen warships (including Indian) in the Gulf of Aden, where piracy attacks reduced by 50 per cent in 2010, has forced the Somali pirates to look elsewhere for booty.
The pirates seize slow-speed, long-range fishing trawlers and use them as “mother ships” to sail on international sea routes and, on sighting a merchant ship, launch small high-speed boats (skiffs) carrying armed pirates who intercept and board the victim ship, sail it to Somalia, and later release the captured ship and hostages in return for millions of dollars.
On April 10, 2010, Somali pirates seized three Thai trawlers — Prantalay-11, Prantalaya-12 and Prantalaya-14 — with their crewmen. On December 4, INS Krishna and ICGS Samrat intercepted a hijacked Bangladeshi merchant ship off the Lakshadweep and Minicoy (L&M) islands, but had to allow the ship to sail to Somalia (where it joined 31 hijacked ships with 700 hostage sailors), when the pirates threatened to execute the Bangladeshi crew. Emboldened by this success, the Somali pirates continued their illegal activities in the waters near the L&M islands. Sixty thousand ships with goods worth over a trillion US dollars pass through the Indian Ocean annually.
To check increased pirate activity, on December 13, 2010, the Indian Navy and ICG launched a combined operation, “Island Watch”, involving ships and aircraft on surveillance missions, in the seas off the L&M islands.
At 10.30 am on January 28, 2011, an ICG Dornier aircraft operating from Kochi noticed two white high-speed pirate skiffs closing in on the slow-moving 73,000-ton Bahamas registered container ship MV CMA CGM Verdi, about 220 nm west of Kochi. The unarmed ICG Dornier aircraft made four low-level passes which caused the two skiffs to panic and abort their attack and return to mother ship Prantalay-14, which was also spotted by the Dornier. Two Indian Navy ships (Cankarso and Kalpeni) and two ICG ships (Sankalp and Samar) operating in the area were ordered to intercept the Prantalaya-14. INS Cankarso was the first to arrive the same evening, at 5 pm. Ignoring INS Cankarso’s repeated calls to stop, the Prantalaya-14 attempted to escape, forcing the Cankarso to fire a single 30 mm warning shot a few hundred metres ahead (traditionally known as “firing across the bows”) of the pirate ship. The pirate ship responded with gunfire, which forced the Cankarso to fire a single shot in self defence from its 30-mm gun. This shot hit the petrol tank of one of the embarked skiffs and a fire quickly devoured the wooden hulled Prantalaya-14. Twenty hostage fishermen and 15 pirates managed to jump in the water from the burning trawler.
The INS Cankarso rescued 20 Thai and Burmese fishermen and transported them to Kochi. Before departing, it left 15 pirates at sea, in naval life rafts, due to shortage of space. These 15 pirates were subsequently embarked on ICGS Sankalp and handed over to the Mumbai police on January 31, 2011. (Admiralty courts dealing with cases of piracy or maritime incidents and crimes are located in Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata.) Interrogation revealed that the pirate mother ship Prantalaya-14 had sunk with 10 pirates, two hostage fishermen, 23 AK-47 rifles, two rocket launchers and seven grenades.

ON FEBRUARY 5, 2011, the ICG Maritime Rescue Co-ordination Centre (MRCC) at Mumbai received information that a Greece-registered oil tanker MT Chios had managed to escape a pirate skiff attack off the L&M islands. An IN Dornier aircraft from Kochi searched the area, while INS Tir and ICGS Samar were directed to intercept the pirates. ICGS Samar detected a suspicious contact on radar (later identified as Prantalay-11), about 100 nm from Kavaratti island and 300 nm west of Kochi. On reaching the area, at about 4.30 am, the Samar had to open fire to chase away a pirate skiff which, in the darkness, had mistaken Samar for a merchant ship. At about 5.45 am, an ICG Dornier aircraft from Kochi (armed with medium machine guns) also arrived and identified Prantalay-11. The Indian Navy and ICG units then closed to within a mile of the trawler.
The Prantalay-11 and its sleepy pirates were taken by surprise and had no reaction time to threaten their hostages, and, after a brief exchange of fire, surrendered with no loss of life (three pirates were injured). A total of 28 Somali pirates and 24 hostage Thai fishermen were then embarked on ICGS Samar for passage to Mumbai, arriving on February 9, along with Prantalay-11, which was also towed by ICGS Samar.
While the Indian Navy and ICG deserve a pat on the back for these operations, it must be remembered that Prantalay-12 has not yet been neutralised and there may be other pirate mother ships around. On February 8, the Italian oil tanker Savina Caylyn (crew included 17 Indians and five Italians) was hijacked by Somali pirates (using a skiff and “mother ship”) some 450 nm from India’s west coast and 700 nm from Somalia.
Piracy has spread to the Arabian Sea and needs to be eliminated ruthlessly before the pirates join hands with sea-borne terrorists. Hopefully, the proposed Indian Navy and ICG coastal stations in the Andaman & Nicobar islands, as also the L&M islands, along with coastal radar stations will become operational soon. More importantly, given the problems of co-ordination between multiple maritime agencies (Indian Navy, ICG, Customs, Marine police, port authorities, offshore rigs, lighthouses, fishermen associations, police etc), Indian Parliament needs to replace the 2009 government directive post 26/11 (with respect to coastal security) with a more comprehensive legislation which unambiguously indicates single-point command, control and accountability, and also empowers that single-point authority (and the Indian Navy and ICG personnel at sea) to deal with the complex task of neutralising emerging threats in our waters and ports.

Vice-Admiral Arun Kumar Singh retired as Flag Officer Commanding-in-Chief of the Eastern Naval Command,
Visakhapatnam