Colombo allows Pakistani frigate Taimur to dock, Dhaka says no

While Chinese built PNS Taimur is on its way to Karachi from Shanghai, the warship has conducted exercises with Cambodian and Malaysian Navies and will expand is diplomatic engagement with Sri Lanka.

Updated on: Aug 8, 2022, 19:44:39 IST

By Shishir Gupta

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Sri Lanka has allowed permission to the Chinese built-Pakistani guided missile frigate PNS Taimur to make a port call at Colombo while on its way to join the Pakistan Navy in Karachi. Build by Hudong-Zhonghua shipyard in Shanghai, the warship is on its maiden voyage to Pakistan while exercising en-route with Cambodian and Malaysian navies. The ship is expected to be at Colombo port from August 12-15, 2022.

Chinese built Pakistani frigate PNS Taimur at a Cambodian Port. The ship is on a maiden voyage from Shanghai to Karachi.

While Sri Lanka gave permission to the Pakistani guided missile frigate to make a port call at Colombo, it is understood that the ship was denied a permission to make a port call at Chattogram port by the Sheikh Hasina government from August 7-10 after making a port call at Lumut port in Malaysia.

According to diplomatic sources, India’s close ally Bangladesh denied permission to PNS Taimur as August is a month of mourning for Sheikh Hasina as her father, Sheikh Mujib-ur-Rehman also fondly called Bangabandhu, was assassinated by Pak instigated and Jamait-e-Islami inspired radical Islamist forces on August 15, 1975.

‘Senseless’: Beijing unhappy as India opposes docking of Chinese ship at Sri Lankan port

The Sheikh Hasina government is close to Narendra Modi government with the Bangladesh Prime Minister clear that her father and family was done to death at the behest of Pakistan. The radical Islamist forces also made an assassination attempt on Sheikh Hasina in 2000 as Prime Minister and in 2004 as the Awami League President.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is scheduled to make a trip to India in the first week of September and along with PM Modi will launch the jointly developed 1320 Mega Watt Maitree Super Thermal Power Project at Rampal in Khulna sub-division.

PNS Taimur, the second of the four Type 054 A/P frigates build in China, was commissioned on June 23, 2022. The lead ship of this class is PMNS Tughril and was commissioned on January 24, 2022. China is also building eight Yuan class -041 diesel attack submarines for Pakistan by 2028 with the objective to militarily flank India on high seas.

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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