Ropar, July 11
While the Navy establishment is engaged in a debate whether to bring up the remains of INS Khukri, which sank off the Gujarat coast during the 1971 Indo-Pak war, a survivor from the ship has disputed portions of the official history pertaining to the tragedy.
Chanchal Singh Gill, who was a shipwright artificer serving onboard the Khukri during the war, said the ship was hit by three torpedoes and not one as is claimed in official accounts. He has also raised a couple of other issues.
In March this year, Navy hydorgaphy ships discovered a 300-metre metal object covered with layers of sand and silt at a depth of about 60 metres about 40 kilometres south of Diu. Given the size of the object, its location and orientation, the Navy believes it is the Khukri lying on its keel on the seabed.
INS Khukri was sunk by a Pakistani submarine, PNS Hangor, on the night of December 9. According to official history, the submarine fired two torpedoes at the ship, one of which went astray and the other hit it midship, causing it to sink within a few minutes. The submarine fired a third torpedo at INS Kuthar, but the ship
maneuvered to avoid being hit and sailed off into the darkness.
“I was on the deck when the first torpedo hit the ship near the propeller, and the explosion threw me overboard," Gill said. "Thereafter, I saw a second torpedo hit the ship's middle, causing some ammunition to explode. The third torpedo hit the ships bow," he added. Ironically, the ship was hit when their was jubilation onboard about reports of another enemy submarine, PNS Ghazi being sunk by Indian warships on the eastern seaboard, being confirmed.
It was 33 years after the incident that he learnt on reading media reports that the official maintained the ship was sunk by a single torpedo, he said. During the period of hostilities, the ship had numerous contacts with submarines, but at the time of the incident, the ship was not on “action stations”, he added.
Gill, now 54, had been posted onboard the Khukri in August, 1971. He joined the Navy after doing his pre-engineering from Calcutta and then underwent four years training in Naval architecture and ship construction. He served the Navy for 10 years and thereafter worked as a project manager for a ship-building firm in Holland and then at a sugar mill in Sudan.
The Khukri, along with her sister ships Kirpan and Kuthar had returned to Bombay on December 6, after providing cover to missile boats during their daring attack on Karachi. En route Khukri, an anti-submarine frigate, made an attack on a submarine. After a day in harbour for replenishment, briefings and liaison, Khukri sailed off with Kuthar on December 8. Among other things discussed in Bombay was the presence of the US Seventh Fleet in the Indian Ocean.
Gill recalled that while he was on a life raft, a submarine surfaced a few hundred yards away and flashed a searchlight at the sinking ship before submerging again. It was only the next day that Kuthar returned, along with other ships, to pick up survivors, he added. Just six officers and 61 sailors survived.
True to the Navy's tradition, Khukri's Commanding Officer, Capt Mahender Mulla, who was on the bridge when the sip was struck, refused to abandon his ship and remained seated in the captain's chair on the bridge till the ship disappeared beneath the dark waters with 18 officers and 178 sailors still onboard. For this, he was decorated with the Maha Vir Chakra.
