Naval vessel sinks off Visakhapatnam harbour, sailor killed, 4 missing

NEW DELHI: In yet another tragic accident in the Navy, a sailor was killed and another four were reported missing after a torpedo recovery vessel (TRV) sank 30 nautical miles south of Visakhapatnam at about 8pm on Thursday.
Till late in the night, hectic search and rescue operations were in progress to find the missing personnel.
The mishap took place when the aging 110-tonne TRV A-72, which was commissioned way back in February 1983, was on a routine mission to “recover” practice mines and torpedoes fired by fleet warships off the Vizag coast in the evening.
READ ALSO: INS Sindhurakshak — Indian Navy sticks to ‘accident’ story behind submarine disaster
“Water suddenly flooded one of her compartments, which finally led to the sinking of the TRV,” said an officer.
In the ensuing panic and chaos, one sailor was killed, while four others were found to be missing. “Twenty-three of the 28 on board, led by Lieutenant Commander Rohan Kulkarni, were rescued in the immediate search-and-rescue mission launched by warships of the Eastern Naval Command. The hunt for those missing is continuing,” he said.
The 23-metre-long A-72 TRV was of the Astravahini-class of auxiliary vessels — whose mission is to recover practice torpedoes fired by warships to ensure they can be used again — was built by the Goa Shipyard in the 1980s. It again highlights the fact that the Navy continues to grapple with old and aging vessels since replacements are hard to come by due to political and bureaucratic apathy.
It was the string of naval accidents, especially the two serious ones on board submarines INS Sindhurakshak and INS Sindhuratna that killed five officers and 15 sailors, which had led Admiral D K Joshi to "own moral responsibility" and resign as the Navy chief on February 26.
READ ALSO: Fire in cables led to accident in submarine INS Sindhuratna, Navy says
The then UPA government had appointed Admiral Robin Dhowan as the chief after a gap of 50 days, superseding Western Naval Command chief Vice-Admiral Shekhar Sinha, who then had also put in his papers.
Though fingers were rightly pointed at the command and control failures within the Navy, the politico-bureaucratic combine itself could not escape responsibility for ignoring the Navy's repeated warnings about its aging submarines, all of them well over 20 years old, as well as other operational gaps in their capabilities.
The Navy, on its part, stripped at least three warship captains from their command after the accidents. 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 last year.
READ ALSO: Another warship accident hits the Navy
Thursday’s mishap comes soon after a huge container merchant vessel collided sideways with a frontline Indian warship, missile corvette INS Kora, around 300 nautical miles off Visakhapatnam in the early hours of last Friday.
Though there was not much damage to the 1,350-tonne INS Kora after it was "scrapped" by the 23,000-tonne Madelieine Rickers, which was on its way to Colombo from Chittagong, but the incident raised eyebrows because a warship packed with radars and sensors was unable to detect the 184-metre long container carrier in time to avert the mishap.
The Navy had then promptly ordered a board of inquiry into "the circumstances" that led to the mishap, which was described as "very serious" by insiders because a warship is supposed to maintain "a sanitized zone” around it at all times.