The new Maritime Anti Piracy Act, enacted in 2022, has been a “great enabler”, and is one of the reasons why we have been successful, Navy Chief Admiral R. Hari Kumar said on the new law as the Indian Navy completed 100 days of ‘Operation Sankalp’ in the Gulf of Aden to the North Arabian Sea and to the East Coast of Somalia.
“This has empowered us to visit, board, search and seize. Any suspicious vessel craft or fishing boat or dhow which we suspect, we board, inspect, and if we find piracy triggers like skiffs, weapons, ammunition, then we take action to ensure that they are don’t proceed with their mission,” Admiral Kumar said in response to a question from The Hindu during a press conference on Saturday. There are very few countries which have an Act like this, he stated.
In the last 100 days, as part of Operation Sankalp, the Navy has carried out over 1,000 boardings. Elaborating, Admiral Kumar said that earlier, they never had any law, so it was quite nebulous. “In our earlier operations, whenever we captured, there was hardly any place where you could take them for handing over,” he noted, and only the Yellow Gate Police Station in Mumbai (Mazgaon), was nominated for handling them. But now all coastal police stations have been empowered. “We have this anti-piracy Act which has been a great enabler for the security forces, particularly for the Navy, since we are involved in anti-piracy operations,” Admiral Kumar said.
Talking of a salient feature of the Act, maritime expert Pooja Bhatt said the Maritime Anti Piracy Act empowers the Indian Navy and Coast Guard to board, seize and arrest pirates operating in the high seas, in the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) and beyond, and Indian courts can prosecute the perpetrators with life imprisonment, fine, or both. “However, the Act also considers the offence as extraditable, where India has signed such treaties with those countries. India has an agreement with Somalia where Somalian pirates have been extradited since 2017,” Dr. Bhatt added.
“An Act to give effect to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) relating to repression of piracy on the high seas and for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto,” the Act states. India ratified UNCLOS in 1995.
Since mid-December, as part of Phase 2 of Operation Sankalp, the Indian Navy saw the deployment of over 5,000 personnel at sea, over 450 ship days (with over 21 ships deployed), and 900 hours of flying by the maritime surveillance aircraft to address threats in the maritime domain.
“As of yesterday (Friday), we had 11 submarines operating simultaneously in the sea, with more than 35 ships and over five aircraft deployed in different parts of the Indian Ocean Region,” Admiral Kumar said adding, “So we are making sure that our assets are deployed in an optimal manner to ensure that it covers the area of interest and gives us the best information so that the maritime domain awareness and the requisite degree of transparency is achieved.”
