Eleven fishermen from the 13-member crew on board the Indian fishing vessel Marthoma were rescued, while the search for the remaining two crew members is ongoing by Indian Navy and Coast Guard vessels.
A Scorpene-class submarine of the Indian Navy collided with a fishing trawler off the Goa coast during the operation “Sea Vigil 24,” a coastal defense exercise, late on Thursday night.
Eleven fishermen from the 13-member crew on board the Indian fishing vessel Marthoma were rescued, while the search for the remaining two crew members is ongoing by Indian Navy and Coast Guard vessels.
“Search and rescue efforts for the missing fishermen are underway, coordinated with the Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre in Mumbai. Six naval ships and surveillance aircraft have been deployed, with additional assets diverted to the area to augment the search efforts,” said an Indian Navy spokesperson.
The Indian Navy declined to share details regarding the damages to the diesel-electric submarine, which is armed with long-range guided torpedoes and anti-ship missiles.
Earlier in July, a major fire on board the frontline guided missile frigate INS Brahmaputra, which was undergoing maintenance and refit at the Naval Dockyard in Mumbai, raised questions about the Indian Navy’s safety protocols in the Mumbai harbor.
The submarine collision marks a series of tragedies plaguing the Indian Navy’s western coast over the past ten years, raising concerns about the severe shortage of naval officers and resources to manage the aging fleet.
“It is a major embarrassment for the Indian Navy, conducting coastal defense exercises, to be involved in an accident with a fishing vessel,” fumed a senior naval commander. “The fact that a fishing vessel in close proximity went undetected until the collision with the stealth submarine exposes security breaches in coastal defense.”
The collision occurred 70 nautical miles northwest of the Goa coast when the submarine was in transit, after participating in the joint coastal defense exercises and was surfacing.
The Indian Navy had concluded the fourth edition of the ‘Pan-India’ Coastal Defense Exercise Sea Vigil-24 on Thursday, which spanned an unprecedented scale in terms of geographical reach, covering the entire 11,098 km coastline and an Exclusive Economic Zone of 2.4 million square kilometers. The coastal defense exercise had participation from six ministries and 21 state and central security agencies.
A multi-agency search and rescue operation was launched by the Indian Navy, Coast Guard, and Coastal Police with the help of local fishing communities to locate the missing fishermen in the dark waters.