The crew of the Denmark-flagged MV Danica Sunrise — which was intercepted and detained by the Coast Guard here on Sunday night — admitted to having dumped two AK-47 rifles in the Arabian Sea, official sources told The Hindu here on Tuesday.
“This has developed further suspicion,” a Coast Guard official said.
A team comprising various security agencies has been interrogating the crew and the guards even as the ship stands detained in the Indian waters at the Mumbai port's inner anchorage.
ADVERTISEMENT
The Coast Guard ship Subhadra Kumari Chauhan detained MV Danica Sunrise around 10 p.m. on the basis of intelligence inputs that the vessel was carrying a large cache of arms and ammunition. There are eight members on the ship, six crew and two security guards. The crew are all believed to be Danish, while the two security guards are British.
Joint interrogation
The team — comprising the Intelligence Bureau, the Navy, police, the Coast Guard and the Anti-Terrorism Squad — has been jointly conducting the interrogation of members and searches of the ship.
ADVERTISEMENT
The searches have yielded nothing of relevance till now.
Several questions
The interrogation seeks to elicit answers to several questions. First, it is not clear why the vessel came to Mumbai; the cargo ship was not carrying any cargo when it came here. The crew are said to have given varying answers; while one said they wanted to disembark two of its members, another said they wanted to repair some snags in the vessel.
The two security guards on-board the ship were retired British Army officials, sources said.
‘Why drop the arms?'
The cargo ship is believed to have come from Kuwait.
“The question is why did they throw the AK-47s in the water if they had kept them to protect themselves? What is the guarantee that they have not handed over the weapons to someone else? We also need to know if there were some other arms that they were carrying besides the AK-47s,” an official said.
NSG team's inspection
A National Security Guard team on Tuesday inspected the merchant vessel.
While talking about the way the ship was intercepted, a Coast Guard official told The Hindu that action was taken based on specific intelligence inputs.
“We had intelligence inputs, but we did not even know the name of the vessel. All we knew were the surnames of two persons. We accordingly asked all the vessels on inner anchorage here if there were any members with that surname on their ship.
“MV Danica Sunrise responded positively. The first interrogation took place at 10 p.m. on Sunday,” he said.
The Coast Guard Public Relations Officer said that interrogation was still in progress.