A day after a Thai shipowner claimed it was his trawler with 15 men on board that the Indian war ship INS Tabar had sunk off the Gulf of Aden last week, the Indian Navy on Wednesday maintained that it was a pirate ship that the Tabar had sunk.
The company claimed that the ship had just been hijacked when the Tabar intercepted it and sunk it.
"The navy's stand is the same," a spokesperson said. Asked if the navy had any details about the hijack claim of the Thai company, the spokesperson said: "See there are no special pirate ships. When they capture a ship, they use it for their operations."
What INS Tabar sunk was a Thai trawler
Asked specifically if it was a mother ship (a large vessel used by pirates to launch hijack operations) as the navy had initially claimed, the spokesperson did not give a direct answer.
"We can confirm that there were pirates roaming on the upper deck of the ship. We identified ourselves and asked the other ship to identify itself. They did not do so," he said.
INS Tabar sinks Somali pirate ship
Explaining the sequence of events that led to the Tabar sinking the ship, he said: "It is not that the Tabar opened fire as soon as it came across the ship. What I mentioned above went on for over an hour. The Tabar then sent up a flare to get a better sight of the other ship and clearly saw pirates armed with rocket launchers.
"When the Tabar asked them to identify themselves for one last time, the ship responded by saying that they will blow themselves up if the Tabar approached them any further.
"And again it was them who opened fire first. The Tabar then opened fire in self-defence and the ship was sunk. Two speed boats escaped from that ship and one was found abandoned," he said.
The navy also did not have any information on the other occupants of the ship apart from the pirates it claims the Tabar sighted on the upper deck.
If the claims of the Thai owner are true, the sunken ship had other crew members on it who were not pirates. In which case, at least 15 crew members were aboard when it went down.
A Cambodian-born crewman escaped and reportedly floated for several days before being rescued off the coast of Yemen. The other crew members are still missing.
Asked about the 14-strong crew of the Thai trawler, the spokesperson said: "Apart from the two speed boats, we did not see any other persons on the ship. We can't say anything about whether there were other members."
