Navy, Coast Guard capture 28 Somali pirates

The 28 pirates who were captured early yesterday morning had been first spotted at sea by a Dornier aircraft at about 8 pm on Saturday, a defence ministry release said.
 
On Saturday, the Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre (MRCC), Mumbai, had received information that heavily armed pirates were chasing, MT Chios, a Greece-flagged crude oil tanker, around 82 nautical miles west of Suheli Par in the Lakshadweep archipelago.

The tanker, en route to Yemen from Singapore, adopted best management practices and evasive manoeuvres to dodge the pirate skiffs. Meanwhile, the armed Dornier maritime reconnaissance aircraft that had taken off from naval air station INS Garuda in the Southern Naval Command spotted the skiffs around 8 pm on Saturday.

The Dornier relayed the location coordiates of the skiffs to INS Tir, which caught up with the skiffs and the mother ship following a chase which continued till first light yesterday. The operation was joined in by coast guard vessel ICGS Samar at around 5 am.  

On being asked to surrender and prepare to be boarded, the skiffs opened fire. According to a defence officer, the defence ships chased the two pirate boats, which headed for the mother ship, a captured fishing trawler. The Prantalay-11 trawler had been apparently hijacked several months ago off the Somali coast, and was being used as a mother ship by the pirates.

According to defence officials, the pirates aboard the mother ship were asked to surrender, but they too opened fired. The pirates then hoisted a white flag to signal surrender after an exchange of fire. The capture pirates would be first taken to Kochi for medical assistance before being brought to Mumbai.

On seizing the vessel from the pirates the navy and coast guard realised that it was one of the two Thai fishing trawlers that had been hijacked in April 2010 off Somalia. According to sources, the Prantalay-11 and Prantalay-14 were hijacked by pirates with the crew members being held hostage. The hostages were assigned duties on board under threats of dire consequences if they failed to obey orders.