NEW DELHI: Indian Navy stealth frigate INS Trikand on Thursday foiled a piracy attack on a merchant vessel in the Gulf of Aden by deploying MARCOS commandos to secure the ship after suspected Somali pirates damaged it and forced all 21 crew members, including an Indian national, to take refuge inside the vessel’s citadel.
The merchant vessel, MV Golden Arsenal, flagged in St Vincent and the Grenadines, was sailing from Aden in Yemen when it came under attack on Wednesday, around 300 nautical miles east northeast of Djibouti.
Sources in the defence and security establishment told TNIE that the mission was launched after an American P-8 maritime patrol aircraft detected suspicious activity over an open communication channel late on Wednesday. The alert was relayed through the Information Fusion Centre-Indian Ocean Region (IFC-IOR) in Gurugram, following which mission deployed INS Trikand was diverted to intercept the vessel.
As the frigate closed in, it broadcast warning messages twice to both the merchant crew and the suspected pirates. By then, the attackers had already damaged the vessel’s bridge superstructure and adjoining compartments, sources said.
“The 21 crew members had locked themselves inside the ship’s citadel and were reported safe. The saferoom is designed to provide basic control and communication facilities and can be secured from within during piracy attacks,” a source said.
With the crew sheltered inside, a MARCOS boarding team from INS Trikand boarded the vessel on Thursday morning to eliminate any remaining threat.
“Following a thorough search, no suspicious personnel were found onboard. The crew subsequently exited the citadel safely and, along with Indian Navy personnel, commenced an assessment of the vessel’s condition,” the Navy said.
An Indian Navy P-8I long range maritime reconnaissance aircraft simultaneously maintained aerial surveillance over the area, strengthening maritime domain awareness and supporting the anti piracy operation.
Declaring the mission complete, the Navy said the vessel had been sanitised, the immediate threat neutralised and MV Golden Arsenal had resumed its onward voyage.
“The Indian Navy remains committed to safeguarding merchant shipping, countering piracy and ensuring the safety and security of all seafarers in the region, irrespective of nationality,” it said.
The latest attack underlines a worrying resurgence of Somali piracy after years of relative dormancy. Networks that had been largely dismantled through sustained multinational naval operations are once again targeting commercial shipping across the western Indian Ocean, extending their reach far beyond the Horn of Africa.
The growing threat has prompted renewed concern among maritime security agencies. The Joint Maritime Information Centre raised its piracy threat assessment to “severe” in May following a string of hijackings involving fishing dhows and merchant vessels.
According to the Pretoria based Institute for Security Studies, Somali pirate groups are now operating more than 1,000 nautical miles from their coastline, using hijacked vessels as motherships to launch attacks deep into the Arabian Sea.
The fresh operation marks INS Trikand’s second anti piracy intervention in less than two weeks. Last month, the Russian built Talwar class frigate responded to a distress call from MV Fareeda 5 following a suspected piracy attempt in the western Indian Ocean.
In May, guided missile destroyer INS Kolkata similarly thwarted an attempted hijacking of MV Mashallah 1 near the Gulf of Aden.
The Navy has maintained an uninterrupted anti piracy deployment in the Gulf of Aden since 2008 and currently keeps multiple warships deployed under Operations Sankalp and Sanchet to secure critical sea lanes across the Indian Ocean Region.
Subsequently, as piracy resurges and extra regional threats multiply, India’s ambition to serve as the region’s “preferred security partner” and first responder is increasingly being tested in real time.
