India summons Pakistan envoy after naval collision in the North Arabian Sea

India summoned Saad Ahmad Warraich, chargé d’affaires at the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi, on 16 September and lodged a formal protest after a collision between a Pakistan Navy ship and an Indian Navy warship in the North Arabian Sea. The Ministry of External Affairs called the Pakistani unit’s conduct “unacceptable and unprofessional.” The incident took place on the evening of 15 September in international waters. India says it caused no major damage to the Indian ship or its crew.

Indian sources described the sequence as follows. A frontline Indian warship, identified in later briefings as a Kolkata-class destroyer, was on a routine surveillance mission under Operation Urja Suraksha. PNS Hunain, a Yarmook-class vessel also described as an offshore patrol ship with pennant F-273, was in the area for Pakistan’s Sea Spark exercise. The Pakistani ship shadowed the Indian unit, then closed at high speed and, according to those sources, cut across the Indian ship’s bow from the starboard side. Warnings had been sent on Channel 16, the international maritime distress and calling frequency.

Ship logs cited by Indian government sources and reported by News18 showed no mechanical failure, steering fault or emergency avoidance manoeuvre on Hunain before the contact. That point matters because it undercuts any claim that the approach was an accident of equipment. Pakistan has not issued a detailed public account of the manoeuvre. Indian officials instructed the Indian High Commission in Islamabad to deliver a matching protest to Pakistan’s foreign ministry.

The legal hook New Delhi used is Article 10 of the April 1991 Agreement between India and Pakistan on Advance Notice on Military Exercises, Manoeuvres and Troops Movements. That article requires naval ships and submarines of the two countries to stay at least three nautical miles apart in international waters. The MEA said the Pakistani ship’s conduct was in direct contravention of that rule. The chargé was told to convey to Islamabad the need for all military units to observe due care and respect the agreements so that the incident is not repeated.

This is the first overt military friction at sea since the four-day conflict last year that ended in a ceasefire. A similar collision in the Gulf of Aden in 2011 produced a diplomatic row but no lasting change in operating patterns. The 1991 pact exists precisely because close encounters between two nuclear-armed navies can escalate faster than politicians can walk them back. Three nautical miles is a short distance at speed. A bow crossing at night in the open ocean leaves little margin for error.

Pakistan has separately extended its airspace ban on Indian-registered aircraft until 24 October. That decision sits on a different track, civil aviation rather than naval tactics, but it is part of the same atmosphere. Both sides are running exercises and surveillance patrols in waters that neither treats as empty. The 1991 rule is only useful if both navies treat it as binding when a shadowing ship decides to close the range.

The immediate military result is limited: no reported casualties, no reported mission kill. The diplomatic result is a summons, a statement, and a reminder that the last hot conflict is less than two years old. What happens next depends on whether Islamabad answers with its own account of Hunain’s track, and whether both staffs issue tighter instructions before the next patrol cycle in the same stretch of sea.