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Scraps of a sinking ship
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With the release of Ian Cardozo's The Sinking of INS Khukri, many poignant moments come alive, but not without hinting at negligence at several levels
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PHOTO: SANDEEP SAXENA
CHRONICLING COURAGE Ian Cardozo and Manu Sharma in New Delhi
The euphoria over India's victory against Pakistan in 1971 had sunk one of our greatest tragedies at sea. M.N. Mulla, the Captain of the ship, INS Khukri, has remained so far the only Indian captain to go down with a vessel to his watery grave. That in the process of saving as many of his men as possible in the high seas in a span of just two minutes, he lost his life along with 178 sailors and 18 officers was but a part of duty.
Thirty-five years later, this December, Major General (retired) Ian Cardozo has put together some of the ship's survivors' stories in the Roli Books' The Sinking of INS Khukri. Among many pointers at the mishandling of things at several levels, which might have led the ship to sink in the Arabian Sea, the book has brought alive many poignant moments from the survivors' memory.
In fact, the book, relates Cardozo, has happened after a chance conversation of the Roli publisher Pramod Kapoor with Commander Manu Sharma, the only senior officer to last the tragedy. "Kapoor asked me to write about it. I am grateful to him because it gave me a chance to tell the man on the street about an act of bravery of our defence forces," says AVSM and VSM accorded Cardozo.
Sharma, who left the Navy to settle down in America after a short stint with the Government after Khukri's sinking, is in New Delhi these days, coinciding his visit with the book's launch. He relates what happened that cold December 3 night with the freshness of the morning rose even after three decades. "Our squadron had INS Khukri, INS Kuthar and INS Kirpan. Captain Mulla was the squadron head and I was its Operations Officer," he begins.
New Sonar system
Sharma's story travels through the bursting of the broiler of INS Kuthar and how the squadron was ordered back from near Karachi port just when the war was about to break.
That there was a Pakistani submarine (PNS Hangor) hiding somewhere close to Bombay port was known to them. "While escorting in Kuthar to the Mumbai dock, Khukri detected a disturbance on its sonar and fired at it. It had reported this to the headquarters," he says. "Later, I met a fleeing Pakistani naval officer posted at INS Hangor, who hailed from Bangladesh, and he confirmed that Khukri had indeed hit it. It then needed repairs and was waiting for orders from Pakistan to return to Karachi," relates Sharma.
Fateful night
But on that fateful night, when the helicopters guarding Khukri were not replaced even after two hours, it was too good an opportunity for Hangor to give up. "We had a lot of trouble with a new sonar system fitted on the ship from Bhabha Atomic Research Centre.
No earlier trials were done on it. Later, deposing before the Inquiry Board, no one was ready to take the blame for such an irresponsible decision at wartime," says Sharma.
Meanwhile, Hangor rose up, shot two torpedoes, and in minutes, sunk Khukri.
"When the first torpedo hit Khukri at around 8.30 p.m., Captain Mulla ordered me to check it. I went to the flag deck area from where you can see the entire ship. Then another torpedo hit it. The power went off, it was pitch dark, and as it was wartime, the hatches were closed. So, there were very few escape routes," he recounts. As the Captain asked them to jump to the sea, they tried to pull him out too but in vain. "After I swam a bit, I looked at the ship, its bow was pointing upwards and was slowly sinking. As the light of the fires illuminated it, I had a glimpse of Captain Mulla sitting on his chair and hanging on to the railing. He was smoking a cigarette," he adds. That Mulla was not honoured with a Paramvir Chakra upsets him.
Elaborating on the scene of the sinking, Sharma talks of the ship's oil spilling on to the sea which made many vomit, burned eyes, and how the force with which the vessel went down took with it several men trying to swim away from it.
Late rescue
They hoped that INS Kirpan, which was nearby, would come to their rescue. It didn't, and returned only the next day at 10.a.m. By then, many lost their lives. Captain Sood later deposed before the Board of Inquiry that his ship had technical problems but Sharma says he had no knowledge of it as the Operations Officer of the squadron. "I would have known it," he says.
Cardozo is somewhat soft on it. "He is a heart patient. He didn't want to talk about it. Please don't mention this," he says. Well, who knows if Captain Sood had decided to speak, it could have been a different tale
SANGEETA BAROOAH PISHAROTY
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