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First Eastern Fleet warship sets sails to fight pirates

New Delhi, Sept 23 (PTI) INS Rajput, one of navy's oldest destroyers, today set sails for the Gulf of Aden to take over responsibility of anti-piracy operations there from INS Delhi.This will be the first time in the past two years that a warship from the navy's Visakhapatnam-based Eastern Fleet will be deployed in the fight against the sea brigands in the Gulf of Aden.Rajput, which underwent a major retrofitting of its sensors and weapons systems two years ago, will "take over on task" from Delhi, another guided missile destroyer, on September 26, a senior navy officer told PTI here.It will be the 19th Indian warship to be deployed in anti-piracy operations off Somalian coast since India decided to take head-on the sea brigands in October 2008.In the two years since India decided to fight piracy that threatened movement of cargo via the Gulf of Aden, only the Mumbai-based Western Naval Fleet has borne the burden of deploying warships there.Rajput will be the first warship from the Eastern Fleet to go to Gulf of Aden, the officer said.Delhi, which was deployed there to escort merchant vessels transiting the pirate-infested waters on July 14, has stayed there for over two-and-half months, the longest ever by any Indian warships so far."With Delhi, the deployment period for the warships on anti-piracy patrol in Gulf of Aden has been increased to two- and-half months. Rajput too will do the same and so will future warships that will escort merchant vessels there," the officer said.Rajput, a Russian platform inducted into the Indian Navy in September 1980, has completed 30 years of service.During the last indigenous refitting effort in 2008, the warship had got its missile systems replaced and now has the latest surface-to-air and cruise missiles added to its weapons inventory, apart from modern electronic warfare and radar systems.Delhi, which would return to its home base Mumbai by end of this month, had during its deployment in Gulf of Aden escorted 167 merchant vessels carrying out 28 transits up and down the Internationally Recommended Transit Corridor (IRTC).The modern destroyer, commissioned in 1997, had thwarted four pirate attacks on merchant vessels in 10 days in the early part of this month.Since the Indian Navy began patrolling the Gulf of Aden, no merchant vessels it escorted had fallen prey to the sea brigands. Till date, Indian warships have escorted 1,258 cargo ships along the IRTC to safety.