How Pakistan's agency helped Indian Coast Guard rescue 12 crew members from capsized vessel in Arabian Sea | Watch

The Indian Coast Guard (ICG) and the Pakistan Maritime Security Agency (PMSA) reportedly joined hands to rescue 12 crew members from a sunken merchant vessel in the Arabian Sea. The vessel sank in the water body during its voyage to Iran's Bandar Abbas port from Porbandar in Gujarat, officials informed PTI.

The Indian Coast Guard and PMSA jointly carried out the rescue operation. The ICG, in a press release, said, "This humanitarian search and rescue mission saw a close collaboration between the Indian Coast Guard and PMSA, with both nations' maritime rescue coordination centres (MRCC) maintaining continuous communication throughout the operation," PTI reported.

The footage below shows Pakistan's MSA aircraft and merchant ship MV Cosco Glory rescuing 12 crew members of the sunken Indian ship MSV Al Piranpir. According to an ANI report, the rescued crew members were taken for medical checkups.

Here's what happened

The merchant vessel, identified as ‘MSV Al Piranpir,’ started its journey on December 2 with general cargo. On Wednesday, it suffered a mishap outside Indian waters, in Pakistan's search and rescue region.

The vessel MSV Al Piranpir encountered rough seas and flooding and subsequently sank on December 4 morning. The Indian Coast Guard's MRCC, Mumbai, received a distress call after which the ICG regional headquarters (North West) in Gandhinagar were alerted.

ICG ship Sarthak rushed to the reported location and the rescue agencies sought help from MRCC Pakistan to alert mariners in the area. Sarthak's extensive search operation yielded results as 12 crew members, who had abandoned their vessel and taken refuge in a small dinghy, were located.

Their dinghy was found within Pakistan's search and rescue region around 270 km west of Dwarka. The 12 survivors of the cargo vessel were soon transferred to Porbandar harbour. PMSA aircraft and the merchant ship MV Cosco Glory were also involved in the search operation.

(With PTI inputs)