Another warship mishap hits the Navy

NEW DELHI: In yet another warship accident, missile corvette INS Khutar was damaged after it recently ran aground at the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The Navy has ordered a board of inquiry (BoI) into the accident, which is the 15th such incident after submarine INS Sindhurakshak sank in August 14 last year.

The 1,350-tonne Khutar, which was commissioned in 1990, was entering the harbour to dock at one of the two jetties at Port Blair when it ran aground in "rough weather" towards end-June. "The propeller of the corvette was damaged ... it will undergo repairs at Vizag," said an officer.

Though INS Khutar is part of the Eastern Naval Command, the Khukri-class corvette was on a long-range patrol in the Bay of Bengal. The BoI is being headed by a captain from the A&N tri-service command.

File photo of INS Sindhurakshak.

It was the string of accidents, especially the two serious ones on board submarines INS Sindhurakshak and INS Sindhuratna that killed five officers and 15 sailors, which led Admiral D K Joshi to "own moral responsibility" and resign as the Navy chief on February 26.

The then UPA government had appointed Admiral Robin Dhowan as the chief after a gap of 50 days, superseding the then Western Naval Command chief Vice Admiral Shekhar Sinha, who then had also put in his papers. The politico-bureaucratic combine itself, however, cannot escape responsibility for ignoring the Navy's repeated warnings about its ageing submarines, all of them over 20 years old.

The Navy, on its part, stripped at least three warship captains from their command after the accidents. This included Captain Gopal Suri, who was removed after the Russian-origin stealth frigate INS Talwar rammed a fishing vessel off Ratnagiri on December 23. Four officers and two sailors of INS Talwar are facing a court-martial after being held guilty in the BoI.

File photo of INS Sindhuratna.

The probes into the other cases are still in progress. The biggest accident was the sinking of Kilo-class submarine INS Sindhurakshak after a series of internal explosions at the Mumbai naval dockyard, killing three officers and 15 sailors on August 14. The wrecked submarine was recently fished out of water for forensic and other examination, which will help the BoI conclude its investigation.

"Lessons learnt from the Bols are being implemented. Corrective steps have been taken by naval headquarters with extensive checks on weapon related safety systems and audit of standard operating procedures on all operational naval units," defence minister Arun Jaitley told Parliament last week.

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