More Somalian raids in future: Coast Guard

Even as the Indian Navy and Coast Guard successfully managed to push the Somalian pirates out of Indian waters, they claim that Somalian pirate attacks will rise in near future. This comes in the backdrop of the Gulf of Aden being heavily patrolled forcing the pirates to target vessels in the Indian Ocean.

Whilst, the joint operations have managed to curb their operations by nabbing them and subjecting them to Indian laws, solving the piracy problem at the grass root level is the political executive's work, said a senior Coast Guard official.

In the early 1990s, famine ravaged Somalians took up to piracy because their livelihood was hit by foreign vessels destroying the fishing grounds by dumping waste and chemicals in their waters.

The coast guard officials on Thursday provided the media persons with a pleasurable outing, on board the Indian Coast guard ship Samar, about 2.5 nautical miles ( 4.6 kms) from the Foxtrot jetty at Tiger gate, Ballard Pier.

Here, the officials conducted a press conference to brief the entire joint- operations namely " OP Island Watch" that was executed against the Somalian pirates, since mid December last year.

Updating the media on the Italian ship that was hijacked on Tuesday, Inspector General of Coast Guard, SPS Basra, said, " The oil tanker MV Savina Caylyn, with 17 Indian crew on board, which was hijacked around 670 nautical miles from Indian waters, is being taken to Somalia.

Apart from that we have learnt that there are at least six mother vessels and three more groups of Somalian pirates." Explaining the drawbacks faced by the Indian Navy and Coast guard, Basra cited an initiative, " Eye in the Sky", which is a joint waterborne patrolling for combating piracy in the Malacca Strait by three nations viz. Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore. We do not have any International convention until now to combat piracy.

However he added, " Even as our domain is limited to 200 nautical miles (370 kilometers), if lives are to be saved we can reach out till 500 nautical miles (926 kilometers)."