The entry of Merchant Tanker (MT) Pavit in Indian waters and later being detected by the maritime security agencies is “an aberration” claimed chief of naval staff Admiral Nirmal Verma on Saturday.
“The ship was drifting for over a month. It has been an aberration. What we will be doing is tracing the path of MT Pavit back from where all it has drifted or sailed,” said Admiral Verma.
According to him, once the path is established, the next step would be to check if any of the Indian Navy deployments were intercepting the path of the unmanned vessel.
On June 29, the Panama flagged vessel started drifting from Ras Al Madrakah off the Oman coast due to engine failure and flooding in the engine room. It had reached the shores of Mumbai on July 31, and the 13 crew members abandoned the 999-tonnes product tanker. The vessel was finally towed from the Juhu-Versova Beach on August 15 and taken to Dighi port.
“Even the weather was bad when the ship came drifting, making the conditions difficult for aerial surveillance. We would be checking if the systems tracking the target had failed,” the Navy Chief added.
He assured that the navy has learnt a lesson from the incident and in future such an occurrence will not happen.
Meanwhile, the Admiral said that it was unfortunate that India did not stake a claim to explore minerals in the Indian Ocean Ridge, as China has bagged the same to look for polymetallic sulphides.
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Delhi, dhaka ink border strip maps
Anisur Rahman
Dhaka, Aug. 20
Bangladesh and India on Saturday inked strip maps to demarcate over 4,000-kilometre international border between the two neighbours in a bid to settle the long-standing frontier-related discord ahead of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to the country next month.
“This signing of the strip maps containing the Bangladesh-India International border boundary line coordination point will end an outstanding issue which (has) remained unresolved for the past 65 years,” said land minister Rezaul Karim Hira at a function in the capital to mark the launch of the signing process.
A strip map is an unscaled drawing of a route to include critical points along the border, roadside features and town facilities on a simple flip-over style map. The map usually incorporates distances. Rajeet Mitter, the Indian high commi-ssioner and Tariq Ahmad Karim, his Bangladesh counterpart were designated to sign jointly some 11,000 maps. —PTI