India summons Pakistan’s envoy after PNS Hunain collides with an Indian warship

India summoned Saad Ahmad Warraich, charge d’affaires at the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi, on 16 September and told him that the conduct of a Pakistani naval unit in the North Arabian Sea the previous evening was unacceptable. The Ministry of External Affairs said the unit had closed on a frontline Indian warship at high speed, manoeuvred unsafely, and struck it in international waters. The Indian ship was on a routine surveillance patrol. Officials said there was no structural damage, no injuries and no loss of capability on the Indian side. The ship stayed on station.

Indian government sources later named the Pakistani vessel as PNS Hunain (F-273), the third ship of the Yarmook class of offshore patrol vessels, commissioned in July 2024. The class was built in Romania for the Pakistan Navy. Sources told Indian outlets that Hunain had been shadowing the Indian ship, ignored repeated calls on Channel 16, the international maritime safety frequency, then accelerated from starboard and cut across the Indian bow. The contact was described as a glancing blow rather than a ramming. Pakistani media had not, by Wednesday evening, issued an official account. Reuters said the Pakistani government and military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Ministry of External Affairs placed the incident under Article 10 of the April 1991 Agreement between India and Pakistan on Advance Notice on Military Exercises, Manoeuvres and Troops Movements. That clause requires naval ships and submarines of the two countries to keep at least three nautical miles apart in international waters unless they have given notice of an exercise. Delhi said Hunain’s approach was a direct breach. The Indian High Commission in Islamabad was told to lodge the same protest with Pakistan’s foreign ministry.

Some Indian reports placed the contact about 220 kilometres, or 118 nautical miles, east of Oman. That would put both ships well outside either country’s territorial sea and outside the Gulf of Oman traffic lanes. Other reports did not give a fix. The Indian captain, according to defence sources quoted by Business Today and India Today, took avoiding action after the Pakistani ship changed course. Those sources said the Pakistani vessel later returned towards harbour with visible damage, described in one account as a large dent. That claim has not been independently confirmed. The Indian side has not named its own ship.

A News18 report, citing government sources, said ship logs examined in Delhi showed no mechanical failure, steering fault or emergency avoidance on Hunain immediately before the contact. If that reading of the logs is accurate, the manoeuvre was deliberate rather than a loss of control. Pakistan has not released its own log extract.

Reuters noted that this is the first instance of overt military tension at sea between the two nuclear-armed neighbours since a four-day conflict last year that ended in a ceasefire. That conflict, which Indian officials still refer to as Operation Sindoor, left both sides with an incentive to keep subsequent encounters below the threshold of gunfire. A collision at sea sits in an awkward band: it is more than a radio challenge and less than an exchange of fire. It also creates a paper trail under the 1991 agreement, which both countries still treat as valid.

The last comparable naval scrape that Indian briefers recalled was in the Gulf of Aden about fifteen years ago. The geography this time is closer to home. The North Arabian Sea is the approach to Pakistan’s Makran coast and to India’s western seaboard. Both navies run persistent patrols there. Close-quarters shadowing is common. Crossing another warship’s bow at speed is not.

The 1991 agreement was written after a period of tense manoeuvres in the late 1980s. It covers land exercises as well as ships and submarines. It does not give either navy a right of innocent passage through the other’s patrol box. It only sets a minimum distance and a notice rule. Delhi’s protest is therefore a claim that Pakistan broke a written safety rule, not a claim that Pakistan entered Indian waters.

For now the facts that can be stated with confidence are narrow. A contact occurred on the evening of 15 September in international waters in the North Arabian Sea. India says the other ship was Pakistani, that it approached at high speed after radio warnings, and that the Indian ship was unhurt. India has invoked Article 10 of the 1991 agreement and summoned Pakistan’s senior diplomat in Delhi. Pakistan has not published a matching narrative. Until Islamabad does, the public record is one-sided. That is itself part of the story. In a theatre where both sides have reason to manage risk after last year’s fighting, silence from one navy after a collision is a choice, not an absence of news.

What happens next is procedural. The two militaries have existing hotlines. Indian officers said the navy has already used those channels. The diplomatic notes will sit on files in both foreign ministries. The operational question is whether either side changes the distance at which its ships will accept being shadowed. Three nautical miles is about 5.6 kilometres. At the speeds warships use on patrol, that gap can close in minutes. The 1991 rule only works if both bridges treat it as binding when the other ship is already inside the circle.