New Delhi: The latest accident in Mumbai harbour between an under-trial Indian Navy speedboat and a private passenger ferry in which 14 people, including four women, two children and a naval officer died, is one of a continuing series of collisions and mishaps which the force that prides itself on its professionalism and seamanship, has endured over nearly two decades.
Since 2005, some 27 major and minor Indian Navy surface combatants like corvettes, frigates, destroyers and torpedo recovery vessels, as well as two submarines, have been involved in serious accidents, in which scores of officers, sailors and civilians have died. All these peacetime mishaps, despite the existence of a dedicated Indian Navy Safety Organisation (INSO) since 2014, had led to many platforms being written off, adversely impacting the operational efficiency of the cash-strapped force which is woefully short of assets.
Furthermore, these disasters had also negatively impinged on the Navy’s higher command structure, as one such incident led to the resignation in February 2014 of the Indian Navy’s Chief of Staff, Admiral D.K. Joshi, following a fire aboard the INS Sindhuratna, a Russian Type EKM877 diesel-electric ‘Kilo’-class submarine, whilst routine trials were being conducted off the Mumbai coast.
Two officers had died in the accident, resulting in Admiral Joshi, unusually, accepting ‘moral responsibility’ for the spate of recent accidents involving Navy platforms, and quitting his post some 17 months before his tenure ended. Six months earlier, in August 2013, an explosion abroad INS Sindhurakshak, a similar Kilo-class boat berthed in Mumbai harbour, had ripped through the area, killing 18 Navy personnel, including three officers. The wrecked submarine was eventually salvaged at great cost, but eventually scrapped, further depreciating the Navy’s already insufficient number of underwater platforms.
The Indian Navy’s recurring accident rate even prompted the Press Information Bureau (PIB) in December 2014 to detail 24 small and major accidents involving assorted naval platforms over a three-year period, January 2011 onwards.
And, thereafter in 2017, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) revealed that the absence of a central structure in the Navy to deal with its platform safety issues had resulted in 38 minor and major accidents between 2007 and 2016, in which 33 naval personnel, including officers, had died.
The CAG stated that since it’s inception, the Indian Navy had no ‘institutionalised framework to deal with safety issues’ despite initiating the INSO in 2014 and implementing it some two to three years later. The CAG disclosed that of these 38 accidents over a nine-year span, 27 were due to crew error and non-compliance with standard operating procedures, five to material failure and three each to electrical fires and lack of ‘Work Up’ or mandatory safety drills to operate platforms.
The governmental watchdog further declared that the Navy had no ‘monitoring mechanism’ to implement recommendations made by the various Boards of Inquiry (BOIs) investigating these accidents which, in turn, merely ended up perpetuating errors. “The INSO has been functioning sub-optimally with various deficiencies including dedicated manpower” said the CAG report, adding that at least 10 platforms commissioned into service since 2011, had not undergone the stipulated ‘Work Up’ preparation till August 2016.
In their defence, a cross-section of Navy apologists has claimed that with a 150-odd platform force which annually clocked over 12,000 ship-days at sea, accidents and mishaps are ‘unavoidable’. They also attribute these accidents to a combination of human error and to being forced to operate ageing platforms desperately needing replacement, following interminable delays by the Ministry of Defence in effecting new acquisitions.
Constraints of space do not allow the tabulating of all the Navy’s numerous accidents, but detailing some of the major ones is revealing, despite the forces feeble claims that many such mishaps were ‘trivial’ and exaggerated by a breathless media.
In December 2005, for instance, INS Trishul, a ‘Talwar’-class frigate equipped with stealth technology collided with a commercial vessel outside Mumbai harbour, followed four months later, in April 2005, with INS Prahar, a ‘Veer’-class corvette hitting Merchant Vessel Rajiv Gandhi, 20 nautical miles off the Goa coast.
Later, in September 2006 INS Dunagiri, a ‘Nilgiri’-class frigate suffered extensive damage in an accident with a Shipping Corporation of India vessel near Mumbai, while in January 2008 INS Sindhughosh, a ‘Kilo’-class boat collided with a foreign merchant ship whilst surfacing north of Mumbai. The IN dismissed the latter incident as ‘minor’, but yet again in February 2015, the same submarines periscope was damaged after hitting a fishing vessel off India’s west coast during Theatre Readiness Operational Level Training Exercises, involving Marine Commandoes.
And, in 2010 three Navy personnel aboard destroyer INS Mumbai were killed when a Soviet/Russian Ak-630 fully automatic rotary cannon fired without warning, as safety drills were reportedly ignored. A year later, in January 2011 INS Vindhyagiri, a ‘Nilgiri’-class frigate capsized after striking a foreign merchant vessel near Sunk Rock Lighthouse, one of three such beacons in Mumbai harbour.
Subsequently, at least seven serious accidents – including the August 2013 blast on board submarines INS Sindhurakshak and the fire on INS Sindhuratna-which led to Admiral Joshi’s resignation alluded to earlier – followed, involving at least four frigates and a destroyer. These were capped by the sinking of a torpedo recovery vessel or TRV in the Bay of Bengal in late 2014 during a routine exercise in which reportedly five Indian Navy sailors died. The latter had prompted the PIB note in 2014, mentioned earlier, enumerating Navy accidents.
Five mishaps followed in quick succession in 2016, all of which were capped in December of that year when guided missile frigate INS Betwa, undergoing a refit at the Naval Dockyard in Mumbai, tipped over during undocking and killing two of its crew and injuring 14 others. Multiple other incidents followed, like the one in January 2022 in which three sailors died in an explosion on board destroyer INS Ranvir, whilst it was docked in Mumbai.
The most recent accident, before Wednesday’s fatal collision off the Gateway of India in Mumbai, involved a fire breaking out on board frigate INS Brahmaputra in July 2024, whilst it was undergoing a refit at Mumbai’s Naval Dockyard. One Navy sailor died in the incident and the frigate listed on one side by about 45°, before it was brought upright at great expense and has subsequently been consigned to extensive repairs.
And while all accidents were duly investigated by specially constituted BOIs, which invariably established the culpability of the respective officers and In personnel involved, leading to either their dismissal from service or removal from command, the naval collisions and smash-ups seem to continue apace.
It is nobody’s case that accidents by the Indian Navy are wholly avoidable. But the preponderance of human failure in many of these calamities remains a commentary on the training regimen of the Indian Navy that prides itself as a world-class Blue-water force, and certainly more professional and competent than its two sister services.
