The Thai fishing company, which claims it lost a deep sea trawler Ekawatnava 5 and 14 crew members in the Gulf of Aden on November 18, today said a British warship backed off after seeing pirates had taken hostages on board but the vessel was sunk hours later by the Indian Navy without verifying the identity of the sailors.India, however, defended the action of INS Tabar with External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee saying that international rules of engagement were followed by the Navy. “The ship was under the command of pirates. As per laws of the high sea, it is perfectly right that one can take necessary action if a ship is under the control and command of pirates,” he told reporters in New Delhi.The statement came even as the International Maritime Bureau, the apex body that monitors piracy-related events, confirmed that the vessel sunk by INS Tabar was a fishing vessel with a Thai crew, hijacked off the Yemen coast.The incident has sparked off a diplomatic exchange between Thailand and India with the former seeking an explanation. Sources said the Thai embassy in New Delhi has sent a ‘note verbale’, seeking clarification regarding facts of the Navy operation in view of media reports. The matter was also raised when Indian ambassador in Bangkok, Lata Reddy, went to meet Foreign Ministry officials this morning to discuss the East Asia summit, sources said. The Bangkok-based Sirichai Fisheries, which has questioned the Indian Navy for not attempting to rescue survivors after blowing up the vessel in international waters, said the last GPS reading from the fishing vessel coincides with the exact position where the Indian Navy said it sank a pirate ‘mother ship’.A company spokesperson told The Indian Express that the vessel’s engineer, Sahat Chunsombat, died in the incident and 14 crew members were missing after it was sunk by the INS Tabar. One of the crew members, Mann Phalla, was picked up from the waters by Yemeni fishermen six days after the incident, the Thai company said. “The Indian Navy has said that two speedboats escaped from the scene and one was later found abandoned. But there was no attempt to rescue survivors. It shows they do not value human life, even if they were pirates,” a company spokesperson said. The Indian Navy has said there was clear evidence of pirates on board the ship (including the ammunition that blew up) and no survivors were found in the waters after the vessel was sunk. It said the warship fired in self-defence after it was attacked. A senior officer said that as far as the Navy was concerned, it was a pirate vessel operating in the high seas and the action by the warship did not cause any collateral damage.Knitting together the sequence of events from the account of the surviving crew member and reports by NATO warships operating in the region, the Thai company said its vessel was hijacked by Somali pirates who came in two speedboats near the Yemen coast on November 18 morning and an international alert was sounded after NATO forces were informed about the incident. The vessel was being forced towards Somalia when it was approached by a British warship at 6 pm. But the warship backed off after pirates pointed guns at three crew members and threatened to kill them. An hour later, at about 7 pm, INS Tabar approached the fishing vessel. According to the statement of the rescued sailor, the vessel was struck by gunfire and three explosions occurred on board. He managed to jump off the vessel that caught fire and floated with the help of its debris. “He found the engineer unconscious, floating in the water. He tied up the engineer with him. In the morning, he found that the injured engineer was dead,” the company said. The Indian Navy, in its statement, said it approached a suspicious vessel at around 7 pm and asked for identification. The vessel, that resembled the description of a pirate ‘mother ship’, threatened to blow up the Indian warship. “On repeated calls, the vessel’s threatening response was that she would blow up the naval warship if it came close to her. Pirates were seen roaming on the upper deck of this vessel with guns and rocket propelled grenade launchers. The vessel continued its threatening calls and subsequently fired upon INS Tabar,” the Navy said.
