Naval base inauguration, Gujarat meet targets of Pak boat crew?

The inauguration of a naval base or an investment summit in Gujarat was the possible target of those aboard the Pakistani boat that blew up close to India’s west coast, the defence minister has been told.

Updated on: Jan 4, 2015, 01:14:55 IST

Hindustan Times | By Shishir Gupta, New Delhi

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The inauguration of a naval base by the Prime Minister or an annual investment summit in Gujarat was the possible target of the four men on board the Pakistani boat that blew up close to India’s west coast, defence minister Mahohan Parrikar has been told.

The opening of the naval facility at Porbandar, Gujarat, had been put off indefinitely, sources said. Parrikar was Saturday briefed by the top Indian Coast Guard commanders, two days after the maritime force intercepted an explosive-laden trawler, whose crew set it on fire 15 minutes into the new year, sources said. The boat was 371km off Porbandar.

Though the security establishment is tight-lipped, counter-terror officials told HT the interception of the boat was the outcome of a 15-day-long tracking and surveillance operation, monitored at the highest level of the national security establishment led by National Security Advisor Ajit Doval.

“We not only know who is involved from Pakistani side but also have the video footage of the boat — from interception to the sinking,” an official told HT on condition of anonymity.

“It was a successful counter-terror operation with visual footage available at each stage.” the officer said.

With the men carrying satellite phones, the National Technical Research Organisation, which had alerted the coast guard about the boat on December 31, had picked some chatter and was keeping a close watch days before the men set sail from Keti Bunder along the Karachi coast, sources said. The 26/11 terrorists, too, had started on their terror journey from the Pakistani port city.

Spectroscopic analysis, said sources, confirmed the presence of explosives on board the rogue vessel.

“That the Pakistani men on board blew themselves up with the boat shows that they were on a suicide mission. If they were ordinary smugglers, why did they run towards Pakistani waters when challenged,” a top defence ministry official said. “The coast guard did not target the boat but the satellite phone-carrying terrorists… blew themselves up.”

The security establishment, however, is not sharing details, saying it doesn’t want to compromise its intelligence channel, sources and capabilities across the border.

Parrikar was told about the sinking of the boat, which came after a tense 16-hour drama in the Arabian Sea, around 9am on January 1 as he was boarding a flight to Bengaluru, sources said.

Video: Pak boat blows itself up after being intercepted by coast guard

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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