Mumbai, Aug 20: The drifting of merchant ship MT Pavit into the Indian waters undetected was an “aberration”, Navy chief Admiral Nirmal Verma said here today, but also added that some “lessons have been drawn” from it.
“The fact that it happened is true and (it) must be accepted that it is an aberration,” the Navy chief told reporters on board India's second stealth frigate INS Satpura, which he commissioned this morning.
“After the Pavit incident, we have done a lot more,” he said.
The ship was drifting for over a month and over a 1,000 nautical miles where it must have crossed any amount of shipping, he said, adding there was also a reasonable deployment of warships in the Arabian Sea.
“We are tracing the path back to see if at any point it could have passed within the deployments we had,” he said.
“There have been lessons which have been drawn from here. I don't see it could happen (again) the way it happened. We are changing some of our patrol areas and procedures to ensure a similar situation does not happen again,” he said.
The Panama-flagged vessel ran aground at Juhu beach here on August 1, after drifting from Oman, escaping the notice of maritime security agencies.
“Last night, there was another detection 250 miles off the coast. We are not even talking about the 25 km or mile belt. We are trying to find out suspicious craft as far as possible,” he said. PTI
