Boat sunk by Indian navy was Thai fishing trawler

NEW DELHI - The pirate "mother ship" sunk last week by the Indian navy was actually a Thai fishing trawler seized hours earlier by pirates, a maritime agency said yesterday. The Indian navy defended its actions, saying it fired in self-defense.

Fourteen sailors from the Thai boat have been missing since the Nov. 18 battle, which was hailed as a rare victory in the fight against increasingly brazen pirates who have rattled the international shipping industry and created chaos in vital sea lanes. At the time, the Indian navy boasted of sinking the vessel and showed pictures of it engulfed in a fireball.

But yesterday, a maritime agency and the boat's owner said it was actually the Thai trawler Ekawat Nava5 that had been boarded by pirates just hours before.

"The Indian navy assumed it was a pirate vessel because they may have seen armed pirates on board the boat," said Noel Choong, who heads the International Maritime Bureau's piracy reporting center in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

One crew member was killed and another rescued, said Wicharn Sirichaiekawat, managing director of Bangkok-based Sirichai Fisheries, which owned the boat. He said they found out about the fate of the boat after speaking to the survivor who was rescued four days later by passing fishermen.

The Thai foreign ministry said it was looking into whether the Indian navy acted correctly.

An Indian navy spokesman, Cmdr. Nirad Sinha, defended his actions, saying the INS Tabar - a 400-foot war machine carrying cruise missiles, surface-to-air missiles, and six-barreled 30mm machine guns - was acting in self-defense.

"Insofar as we are concerned, both its description and its intent were that of a pirate ship," he said. "Only after we were fired upon did we fire. We fired in self-defense. There were gun-toting guys with RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades] on it."

Later, the Indian navy chief, Adm. Sureesh Mehta, said the ship's actions were in line with international practices.

It was unclear if the Indian warship was in contact with other forces in the area, since at least some had been warned that the Thai trawler had been captured.

Sirichaiekawat said his company had contacted the International Maritime Bureau for help after getting messages from other boats that the trawler had come under attack. The British navy responded but later told the company that pirates had already boarded the ship and that any attack on them could cause the crew to be harmed.

There have been 96 pirate attacks this year in Somalian waters, with 39 ships hijacked. Fifteen ships with nearly 300 crew are still in the hands of pirates, who have demanded multimillion-dollar ransoms.