“In a well coordinated and jointly conducted operation the Indian Navy and the Coast Guard intercepted Prantalay which was being used by Somali pirates since April 2010 for piracy at various locations in the Arabian Sea. This vessel has been a risk to international shipping for many months and has carried out several attacks,” an official statement said Saturday.

The pirates were holding 20 fishermen of Thailand and Myanmarese nationalities as hostages after hijacking Prantalay last year. Since its hijack, the vessel was being extensively used by the pirates to launch attacks on merchant vessels passing along the shipping lanes off the island chain.

It said Coast Guard Dornier while responding to a Mayday call from MV CMA CGM Verdi, a Bahama Flagged container ship, located two skiffs attempting a piracy attack. Seeing the aircraft, they dashed toward Prantalay which hurriedly hoisted them onboard and set a westerly course to escape.

While CG and IN Dorniers continuously tracked Prantalay since Friday morning, Indian Naval ship Cankarso, a recently commissioned water jet fast attack craft deployed in the area for anti piracy patrol, was directed to intercept and investigate Prantalay.

By evening, 11 INS Cankarso closed Prantalay and made efforts to establish communication on the international Mercantile Marine Band, but the vessel did not respond and continued to proceed westwards in the hope of escaping.

Cankarso fired a warning shot that triggered exchange of fire and in the process a fire broke out on Prantalay where additional fuel drums were believed to be kept to fuel the skiffs and this prompted both the pirates and hostages to jump out of the vessel.

The Navy rescued 20 fishermen, the original crew of the fishing vessel who were being held hostage for several months after the Thai fishing vessel was hijacked by the pirates and has thereafter been used as ‘mother vessel’ for hijacking merchant ships. Indian warships and aircraft were still searching for more fishermen and pirates, it said. In addition to the anti-piracy patrols being sustained in the Gulf of Aden since Oct. 2008, the Indians had been maintaining vigil West of the Lakshadweep Islands in the last two months to keep the international shipping lanes safe from piracy attacks and they claimed that the piracy incidents in this area had seen a 75 percent decline since December.