The Maritime Rescue Co-ordination Centre Mumbai (MRCC) is responsible for co-ordinating

air-sea rescue Air-sea rescue (ASR or A/SR, also known as sea-air rescue), and aeronautical and maritime search and rescue (AMSAR) by the ICAO and International Maritime Organization, IMO, is the coordinated search and rescue (SAR) of the survivors of emergenc ...

Mumbai Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' financial centre of India. According to the United Nations, as of 2018, Mumbai is the second- ...

and an extensive area of the

Arabian Sea The Arabian Sea ( ar, اَلْبَحرْ ٱلْعَرَبِيُّ, Al-Bahr al-ˁArabī) is a region of the northern Indian Ocean bounded on the north by Pakistan, Iran and the Gulf of Oman, on the west by the Gulf of Aden, Guardafui Channel ...

. Besides the

territorial waters The term territorial waters is sometimes used informally to refer to any area of water over which a sovereign state has jurisdiction, including internal waters, the territorial sea, the contiguous zone, the exclusive economic zone, and potenti ...

. It works under

Indian Coast Guard The Indian Coast Guard (ICG) is a maritime law enforcement and search and rescue agency of India with jurisdiction over its territorial waters including its contiguous zone and exclusive economic zone. The Indian Coast Guard was formally esta ...

Operations

On the evening of 12 January 2012, INCG ''Amrit kaur'' was on a training mission west of the Suheli Par

atoll An atoll () is a ring-shaped island, including a coral rim that encircles a lagoon partially or completely. There may be coral islands or cays on the rim. Atolls are located in warm tropical or subtropical oceans and seas where corals can gr ...

in the

Lakshadweep Lakshadweep (), also known as Laccadives (), is a union territory of India. It is an archipelago of 36 islands in the Arabian sea, located off the Malabar Coast. The name ''Lakshadweep'' means "one lakh islands" in Sanskrit, though the Lac ...

archipelago An archipelago ( ), sometimes called an island group or island chain, is a chain, cluster, or collection of islands, or sometimes a sea containing a small number of scattered islands. Examples of archipelagos include: the Indonesian Archi ...

. She was alerted by the Maritime Rescue Co-ordination Centre (MRCC), Mumbai about

Somali pirate Piracy off the coast of Somalia occurs in the Gulf of Aden, Guardafui Channel and Somali Sea, in Somali territorial waters and other surrounding areas and has a long and troubled history with different perspectives from different communities. I ...

activity in the area to her west. INS ''Tir'' tracked the pirate

skiff A skiff is any of a variety of essentially unrelated styles of small boats. Traditionally, these are coastal craft or river craft used for leisure, as a utility craft, and for fishing, and have a one-person or small crew. Sailing skiffs have devel ...

s to a hijacked

Thai Thai or THAI may refer to: * Of or from Thailand, a country in Southeast Asia ** Thai people, the dominant ethnic group of Thailand ** Thai language, a Tai-Kadai language spoken mainly in and around Thailand *** Thai script *** Thai (Unicode block ...

fishing trawler A fishing trawler is a commercial fishing vessel designed to operate Trawling, fishing trawls. Trawling is a method of fishing that involves actively dragging or pulling a trawl through the water behind one or more trawlers. Trawls are fishing ...

''Prantalay 11'' being used as a pirate

mother ship A mother ship, mothership or mother-ship is a large vehicle that leads, serves, or carries other smaller vehicles. A mother ship may be a maritime ship, aircraft, or spacecraft. Examples include bombers converted to carry experimental airc ...

. On receiving distress call from MT Chios, a Greece-flagged crude oil tanker, was being chased by heavily armed pirates about 82 nautical miles west of Suheli Par in the Lakshadweep archipelago. The tanker, on its way from Singapore to Yemen, adopted best management practices and evasive manoeuvres to dodge the skiffs on the prowl. Meanwhile, an armed Dornier maritime reconnaissance aircraft launched from naval air station INS Garuda in the Southern Naval Command spotted the skiffs around 8pm on Saturday and relayed the location co-ordinates to INS Tir (A86), which was operating in close proximity. There have been many instances of piracy in the

References

Sea rescue organizations Indian Coast Guard Organisations based in Mumbai Government agencies with year of establishment missing {{india-stub