On the eve of the Independence Day when India is all geared up to celebrate this great moment, a disaster occurred in the armed forces as one of the submarines of the Indian Navy mysteriously caught fire through an explosion and sank while it was docked in Mumbai. 3 sailors who were working on top of the vessel had a narrow escape while the fate of the other 18 inside the sub is still unknown at the time of writing this.

This is not the first time that fire occurred on this submarine as it happened in 2010 when leaking gas in the battery compartment caused a fire taking life of a sailor and injuring others, but this time though the cause is not yet known, there are fears that causalities could be more.

After the last explosion the submarine which is a Russian product was sent back to Russia for major repairs and it was there for more than two years and was supposedly fitted with the state of the art equipment and other devices so it is unclear at this stage whether this was an act of sabotage of a technical snag.

The Russian company involved in the overhauling of the sub has obviously refused any such possibility and states that there could not be any fault leading to the explosion but there is some other cause. Of course this will only become clear once the investigation team completes its task and submits a report which is then presented before the nation, still this does raise some doubts about the products which are being built in Russia.

Recent Marine Knowledge carried a story about the warship INS Vikramaditya which is being refurbished in Russia and will be joining the Indian Naval fleet somewhere around the end of the current year. Surely the critics now will have more reasons to worry after this incident.

Let us hope that the cause for this is found soon and if the fault is traced to some technical errors then India should better review its strategic partnership with one of its oldest allies in terms of weapon purchase namely Russia.

Pre-Independence Day Mishap: INS Sindhurakshak Goes Down, 9.1 out of 10 based on 7 ratings