When the Coast Guard received an alert about m.v. Pavit on June 29 after a distress call was sent from the vessel, it had calculated that the adrift vessel would take approximately 30-35 days to reach the south Gujarat coast. When the police called them two days later to tell them about the ship, the first question authorities asked was, “Is it MT Pavit?”
“We had calculated the distance and the speed of the ship the day we received the alert. But then we received information that the ship had sunk. So we removed the alert,” highly placed Coast Guard sources told The Hindu on Tuesday.
The unmanned, adrift vessel was found grounded near the shore of Mumbai's Juhu-Versova beach early on June 31.
“When the police called us to tell about a ship which has run aground, the first thing we asked was, ‘Is it m.v. Pavit?' But we were not expecting it because we had records of the ship as a known case of sinking,” an official said on condition of anonymity.
Officials denied that the incident exposed lapses in the coastal security. “It is not possible for any country to monitor its coastline for 24 hours for all 365 days. Also, no other passing ship reported that a ship was moving without its light on. If we had received an alert that the ship had not yet sunk, we would have actively looked for it,” a senior official said.
Asked about the possibility of a rogue ship trying to do it on purpose, when there will be no alert to any agency, senior officials said: “In case of any intelligence input, we can assure you that all the three agencies will put up such a strong surveillance that it won't be possible for anyone to penetrate.”
Apart from physical surveillance, the Coast Guard is also putting in place Coastal Radar Stations on the coastline of the country. “The trial is going on in Gujarat. Some radars have been installed there,” a Coast Guard official of the West Zone told The Hindu .
“These Coastal Radar Stations can detect ships 24-30 nautical miles away,” a senior official said. But this will be implemented phase-wise after 2011.
