Mumbai: Authorities have gone on high alert along the Revdanda coast in Maharashtra’s Raigad district after a suspicious boat – possibly a Pakistani fishing vessel – was spotted nearly two nautical miles away.
The vessel was picked up on radar by the Navy off the Korlai coast in Revdanda on Sunday night, following which an alert was declared. The Raigad Police, a Bomb Detection and Disposal Squad (BDDS), Quick Response Team (QRT), Navy and the Coast Guard contingents rushed to the spot at night and launched a search.
Raigad SP Anchal Dalal, along with other senior police officials, reached the coast to monitor the situation, an official said. Dalal herself attempted to approach the boat using a barge but had to return due to adverse weather, the official added.
Prima facie, the boat seems to be an abandoned Pakistani fishing vessel that drifted towards the Indian coast due to bad weather.
Security agencies are taking no chances though. On November 9, 2008, ten heavily armed Pakistani terrorists had hijacked an Indian fishing boat – Kuber – and used it to approach the Mumbai coast. After landing, the terrorists had carried out the deadliest terrorist attack so far on Indian soil, killing 166 people – including foreigners – over the next three days.
The spotting also comes less than three months after the gruesome Pahalgam terror attack that caused the deaths of 26 persons, mostly tourists from across the country. It also comes exactly two months after India launched Operation Sindoor against terror infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir (PoJK), killing over 100 terrorists.