ICG increased Arabian sea surveillance following seizure of Pak fishing boat: Shripad Naik

The Indian Coast Guard (ICG) has increased measures to maintain intensive surveillance in the Arabian Sea off the Gujarat coast following the seizure of Pakistani fishing boat 'Al Madina' in May.

In a written reply to BJP member Lal Sinh Vadodia in Rajya Sabha on Monday, Minister of State for Defence Shripad Naik said, "Indian Coast Guard is maintaining intensive surveillance in sea areas off Gujarat coast through deployment of its surface and air assets along with all stakeholders of coastal security mechanism to ensure credible response to any such incident in future."

Naik added that the ICG maintains close coordination with the intelligence agencies including Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) and Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) "for expeditious information exchange to enable (an) immediate response to any emerging situation."

In March, the ICG had seized a Pakistani fishing boat with six crew members aboard sailing in the Indian waters off the International Maritime boundary line (IMBL) in the Arabian Sea. 194 packets of suspected narcotics were recovered from the boat during the search.

In a similar operation earlier this year, the ICG, in a joint operation with Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) had seized about 100 kilograms of Heroin from a Pakistani boat off the east coast of Gujarat. Nine Iranian nationals were apprehended from the boat.