NEW DELHI: With Somali piracy showing fresh signs of resurgence in the Western Indian Ocean, guided-missile destroyer INS Kolkata has foiled a suspected piracy attempt on merchant vessel MV Mashallah 1 near the Gulf of Aden, the Navy said on Wednesday.
Acting on intelligence inputs of pirate activity in the vicinity, INS Kolkata launched its onboard helicopter for aerial surveillance while boarding teams were despatched to sanitise the area and assess the threat.
The Navy said the timely intervention secured the safety of the merchant vessel and pre-empted what could have been a full-blown piracy attack.
The incident is the latest indicator of a renewed threat from Somali pirate networks, which had been largely suppressed through sustained multinational naval pressure over the past decade but are now showing signs of fresh aggression.
The Joint Maritime Information Centre raised its piracy threat assessment to “severe” in May this year, following a series of hijackings of dhows and merchant vessels, according to the Institute for Security Studies (ISS), a Pretoria-based security think tank.
Pirate groups are now operating well beyond 1,000 nautical miles from the Somali coastline, using larger hijacked vessels as mother ships to extend their reach deep into the Arabian Sea.
The resurgence is also unfolding against the backdrop of a broader maritime security crisis in West Asian waters. Prolonged Houthi missile and drone attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea have disrupted global trade routes, forcing vessels onto longer alternate paths through the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea.
Heightened tensions involving Iran, Israel and the United States have further complicated the security calculus, stretching naval forces across simultaneous threats ranging from drone strikes on tankers to armed piracy.
INS Kolkata has been at the sharp end of India’s counter-piracy operations before. In March 2024, the same destroyer played a central role in one of the Navy’s most high-profile piracy operations.
The operation led to the forced surrender of 35 armed Somali pirates who had hijacked cargo vessel MV Ruen and were using it as a mother ship.
India has maintained uninterrupted anti-piracy deployments in the Gulf of Aden since October 2008, escorting hundreds of merchant vessels through one of the world’s most critical trade corridors.
The Navy has also increasingly projected itself as the region’s “preferred security partner” and “first responder,” a role gaining added strategic weight amid China’s expanding footprint and operational reach across the Indian Ocean.