Two sailors missing, five injured after fire on INS Sindhuratna
Two Indian Navy personnel are unaccounted for and seven sailors were injured on Wednesday in a mishap involving the kilo-class submarine INS Sindhuratna off the coast of Mumbai, reports said.
This is the tenth accident involving an Indian Navy warship and the third submarine mishap in the last seven months.
"The mishap occurred on the submarine during a routine training exercise," navy PRO Rahul Sinha told CNN-IBN.
There was a leakage in the battery compartment of the submarine during the exercise which resulted in a fire.
Sinha said the fire on vessel was immediately brought under control adding there has been no grave damage to the submarine.
The navy personnel who became unconscious were airlifted to the naval hospital INS Ashwini in Mumbai.
"An inquiry has been ordered into the submarine mishap," he said.
Sinha said the cause of the fire can be ascertained only after a complete inquiry.
According to PTI, a senior naval officer of the submarine wing was present on the Sindhuratna when the incident took place.
A kilo-class is the Nato reporting name for a naval diesel-electric submarine that is made in Russia. The boats are mainly intended for anti-shipping and anti-submarine operations in relatively shallow waters.
The navy is grappling with an accident-prone tag — seven accidents have been reported since the INS Sindhurakshak blew up and sank at a Mumbai harbour last August, killing all 18 men on board.
Read: Navy may have itself to blame for series of recent accidents
Around a month ago, INS Sindhughosh had a close shave when it entered the Mumbai harbour during a low-tide phase and was about to run aground.
Earlier this month, INS Airavat, an amphibious warfare vessel, ran aground after which the commanding officer was stripped of his command duties.
After the sinking of the INS Sindhurakshak, one of the mishaps involved INS Betwa which was damaged after probably hitting some underwater object.
India's leading minesweeper, the INS Konkan that was undergoing repairs in Vizag, caught fire and suffered major damage to its interiors. The Pondicherry-class minesweeper was getting a refit at a dry dock when the incident occurred.
INS Sindhurakshak, the 2,300-tonne fully-armed boat sank at a Mumbai harbour on August 14, 2013, barely seven months after it was overhauled at the Zvezdochka shipyard, part of the Unified Shipbuilding Corporation.
The upgrade was carried out at a cost of more than Rs. 815 crore.
The Russian-origin warship is still nose-down in water, with the navy recently awarding a Rs. 240-crore contract to a US firm for salvaging the warship.
The Russian shipyard that upgraded the submarine under a 2010 contract had claimed it had installed advanced weapons and systems to enhance the boat's combat capability.
The mid-life upgrade on the warship - the ninth in a series of 10 kilo-class undersea killers bought from Russia - was intended to increase the life of the vessel by at least 10 years.
The submarine underwent an overhaul there for nearly 18 months. A modern Club-S missile system was installed on the submarine along with more than 10 foreign and Indian systems. The
Russian shipyard has modernised five conventional Indian Navy submarines since 1997.
Two sailors missing, five injured after fire on INS Sindhuratna - Hindustan Times