In December last year, a ship bearing the flag of the Republic of Malta, an island country in southern Europe, met with an unfortunate fate when it came under attack from pirates. MV Ruen, a bulk carrier vessel with 18 crew members on board and around $1 million worth of cargo, was hijacked by Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden in the Indian Ocean on December 14.
One of the first responses to this attack came from the Indian Navy, when India’s stealth destroyer INS Kochi intercepted the ship. It also ensured that one of the hostages who had sustained injuries in the attack was given immediate medical attention as well as safely dispatched to Oman for further treatment.
Even as the interception of the ship and rescue operation of the injured crew member were making global headlines, India also deployed another guided-missile destroyer, INS Kolkata, in the region.
With a rise in piracy attacks in the Indian Ocean region, the Indian Navy’s actions demonstrated that it can step up to ensure the safety of commercial vessels in the high seas if a need arises, but the story isn’t over yet.
The remaining crew members on the hijacked ship MV Ruen were still in the custody of the Somali pirates who had whisked the vessel away to Bosaso, a city in Puntland, an autonomous region of Somalia.
The Indian Navy kept monitoring the status of the ship while looking for a suitable opportunity to launch an anti-piracy operation to safeguard the ship from the control of the pirates. That moment came in mid-March, when India finally launched an operation to rescue the remaining crew members on the ship.
The pirates had planned to use MV Ruen as a ‘mothership’ to target other merchant vessels in the region. However, the Indian Navy pressed INS Kolkata and INS Subhadra, along with P-8L, its maritime patrol aircraft, and a high-altitude long-endurance (HALE) unmanned aerial vehicle, into action.
Along with this, the elite marine commandos (MARCOS) were airdropped from C-17 aircraft as a part of India’s anti-piracy operation that successfully concluded on March 16.
With this, not only all 17 crew members were rescued safely, but all 35 Somali pirates on board were also forced to surrender and brought for trial in Mumbai.
Around seven of the crew members were of Bulgarian nationality, leading the President of Bulgaria, Rumen Radev, to profusely thank Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi for India’s ‘brave action’.
These two consecutive incidents of the Indian Navy coming to the aid of a ship sailing in the Indian Ocean are not one-off cases of India’s growing naval prowess.
In January, the Indian Navy’s warship INS Sumitra successfully rescued Al Naemi, a fishing vessel in the Southern Arabian Sea that was carrying 19 Pakistani nationals aboard.
In another incident, India also promptly answered the distress call from FV Iman, an Iranian vessel in the Arabian Sea, and saved its 17 crew members from Somali pirates. When not fighting the pirates, the Indian Navy has also saved vessels from Houthi terrorists. Case in point being the attack on MV Merlian Luanda. Luanda, a ship belonging to the United Kingdom, was safely rescued from a Houthi attack by India’s guided missile destroyer, INS Visakhapatnam, in late January this year.
In the last few months, security in the high seas has become a huge challenge due to the twin threats from pirates as well as Houthi terrorists.
According to a report by the Indian Navy, there was a 20 per cent jump in incidents of piracy and armed robbery in the Indian Ocean Region in 2023, with around 194 recorded incidents as against 161 in 2022. The report has been prepared by a dedicated Information Fusion Centre – Indian Ocean Region (IFC-IOR), a regional maritime security centre hosted by the Indian Navy.
Interestingly, the Indian Ocean was removed as a ‘high-risk area’ just last year due to a visible reduction in piracy attacks as a result of concerted and coordinated patrolling by multiple countries over the last decade. However, with many countries diverting their attention away from the piracy threat in the Gulf of Aden to deal with the Houthi rebels in the Red Sea, the piracy threat off the Somali coast has received a new lease of life.
There is also a school of thought that believes that the pirates and the Houthi rebels have joined hands to create trouble in unison, with intelligence reports suggesting linkages between Hamas-backed Houthis and Al Shabab group of Somalia.
As the security gap in the Indian Ocean is widening due to multiple threats, India, as the resident power in the Indian Ocean with an economic size of $3.6 trillion, is naturally expected to take on a larger role in ensuring the safety of this maritime region.
India’s own 90 per cent of trade by volume passes through the Indian Ocean, not to mention its criticality in India’s oil imports as well. New Delhi had taken cognisance of this fact quite early, since 2008 it started deploying anti-piracy ships in the Gulf of Aden.
Presently, at least ten Indian warships are deployed to combat piracy in the region. With the attention of countries such as the UK and the US shifting to fight the Houthi threat, the Indian Navy has a large task to fulfil. Interestingly, the Indian Navy has no second thoughts about its pre-eminence in the Indian Ocean Region and hence its larger responsibility in ensuring safe passage through the high seas.
Its chief, Admiral R Hari Kumar, minced no words when he said that China may have a legitimate reason to be present in the Indian Ocean region for economic activities, but it is India that has to keep an eye on the happenings in the region as its ‘resident naval power’.
India’s behaviour in the high seas, especially the scale, frequency, and commitment with which it is conducting rescue operations, is a loud testament to the same. Last week’s anti-piracy operation to save MV Ruen with its 17 crew members and around $1 million worth of its cargo shows the future of the Indian Ocean is safe with India’s growing naval prowess.
