'India has decided to take robust action': Naval Chief Admiral Kumar on increased number of piracy, drone attacks

Naval Chief Admiral R Hari Kumar on Tuesday said that India has decided to take robust action to protect its merchant shipping as the number of piracy and drone attacks have substantially gone up.Addressing the media after Indian Navy commissioned its latest stealth-guided missile destroyer ‘INS Imphal’ at Naval Dockyard in Mumbai, Admiral Kumar said, "As you are aware that we are undertaking anti-piracy and anti-drones strike operations. It is a matter of concern now that the number of attacks has gone up. Just to give you the correct perspective, since 19th November, there have been a total of 30 drone attacks and piracy attacks. So from 19 November till now, which is about 35 days, it roughly translates to one attack a day. If we look at one year before that, barely four or five incidents, maybe you can say one in two months or one in three months. So the frequency has definitely gone up."He said that the Indian Navy has decided to protect the merchant shipping and all the suspicious vessels will be searched."...We have decided to take very robust action to protect the merchant shipping. About 50 per cent of these 30 attacks have happened in the Red Sea and no attacks have happened against any of the Indian flagged merchant vessels. There have been extensive attacks on vessels flagged in Uganda and other countries but having our crew, some part of...  we're going to board and search all the suspicious vessels. We will put in additional units to bring this under control...," said the navy chief.MV Chem Pluto, carrying crude oil to New Mangalore port from Al Jubail port in Saudi Arabia, was struck about 217 nautical miles from Porbandar on Saturday. No one was injured in the incident.A Gabon-flagged commercial crude oil tanker with 25 Indian crew members also came under a drone attack in the Southern Red Sea on Saturday but no one was injured, according to Indian officials and the US military.Saturday's drone attacks came amid increasing concerns over various commercial vessels being targeted reportedly by Iran-backed Houthi militants in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden amid the Israel-Hamas conflict.Meanwhile, adding muscle to the naval fleet, Indian Navy on Tuesday commissioned its latest stealth-guided missile destroyer ‘INS Imphal’ at Naval Dockyard in Mumbai.Imphal, which has an ability to fire extended range supersonic BrahMos missile, was commissioned into the Indian Navy in the presence of Defence Minister Rajnath Singh.Apart from Singh, Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde attended the event that marked the formal induction into the navy of the third of four 'Visakhapatnam' class destroyers, indigenously designed by the navy's in-house organisation, Warship Design Bureau, and constructed by defence PSU Mazagon Dock Limited, Mumbai.INS Imphal is the first warship to have been named after a city from northeast India.INS Imphal was delivered to the navy on 20 October after the completion of a rigorous and comprehensive trial programme both in the harbour and at sea.With inputs from agencies