NEW DELHI: The Navy’s guided-missile corvette INS Kora suffered minor damage on Friday after it was scraped by a merchant vessel near Visakhapatnam Port.
According to the Navy, the 2,000-tonne ship, along with another Naval ship INS Gaj, was heading to Port Blair from Visakhapatnam when the incident occurred in the wee hours. The 23,000 tonne merchant vessel registered in Marshall Islands, in the Northern Pacific ocean, was going from Chittagong in Bangladesh, to Colombo in Sri Lanka. It was a container vessel.
“A minor incident involving INS Kora and merchant vessel Madelieine Rickmers has been reported approximately 300 nautical miles at sea from Visakhapatnam, wherein INS Kora was scraped by the merchant vessel in the early hours of Friday,” the Navy in a statement said. ”INS Kora and INS Gaj were going from Visakhapatnam to Port Blair and INS Kora has reported minor damages to its side. There has been no damage to the watertight integrity of the ship or any injuries/ loss of life,“ it said.
Meanwhile, the Eastern Command Naval Headquarters has constituted a Board of Inquiry to investigate the circumstances leading to the accident.
According to Naval officials, following the incident the merchant vessel was stopped and verification was done.
The sources said it would be allowed to continue its journey once they got a written assurance from the ship company that it would cooperate with the Board of Inquiry.