NEW DELHI: Not many would know that the anchor of the Indian Navy’s quick reaction to the distress call by the hijacked Merchant Vessel Ruen lay in Gurugram where the Information Fusion Centre-Indian Ocean Region (IFC-IOR) is located.
“At the back end IFC-IOR coordinated responses and assistance between the Navy and the ship owner,” said Lieutenant Commander Rohit Jadhav, Operations Officer of IFC-IOR to the media on Friday.
“Quickly we got hold of the owner of the ship,” said Captain Rohit Bajpai, Director IFC-IOR. “We were in touch day and night while an Indian Navy patrol aircraft that was in the region was continuously monitoring the vessel till INS Kochi, on deployment in the Gulf of Aden, reached the location on the morning of December 16.
“It was ascertained from the crew that the citadel onboard MV Ruen was breached and all crew members were held hostage by the pirates. One of the crew members was also injured,” said Capt Bajpai. It was Indian Navy’s mission deployed platform, which responded to the maritime incident in the Arabian Sea involving the hijacking of Malta-flagged vessel MV Ruen. The vessel, with 18 crew members onboard, had sent a Mayday message on UKMTO portal on December 14, indicating boarding by about six unknown personnel. The ship is anchored at the Somalian shore.
“This event underlines the advantage of having an Information Fusion Centre, which connects across maritime security constructs, enabling faster reaction to developing situations in regions and areas of interests,” a source said.
Briefing on the major threats being monitored, the Sri Lankan International Liaison Officer (ILO) Commander Indika Prasanna Wijesinghe said that for piracy and armed robbery, there are three major hotspots, namely South East Asia, Gulf of Guinea and the Horn of Africa.
Talking of the collaborations at the Centre, the ILO from Singapore Col Ong Yew Kuan Raymond said what they were doing here was building trust. “We ensure we provide actionable and verifiable information,” he said.
It was after communication between the hijackers and the Indian Navy that assistance helped in the evacuation of an injured crew member from MV Ruen in the early hours of December 18. The International Liaison Officers (ILOs) with a mandate to work as a bridge between the functioning of the Information Fusion Centre-Indian Ocean Region work giving a push to the Indian initiative to engage friendly foreign countries in meeting maritime challenges.
IFC-IOR, headed by Capt Rohit Bajpai, was inaugurated in December 2018 and is tasked to collate, fuse and disseminate intelligence on ‘White Shipping’ in the Indian Ocean. It aims to base 40 international liaison officers once a suitable infrastructure to house them is in place by 2025-26.