Did Coast Guard just foil a terror attack by nabbing 5 Pakistani boats off Gujarat coast?

The Indian Coast Guard (ICG) on Monday evening apprehended five inflatable boats of Pakistani origin off the Gujarat coast. The Coast Guard also arrested 26 people on board these boats and took them to its Jakhau post in Gujarat for further interrogation.

However, those arrested claimed they were fishermen had reportedly come into Indian waters and were only 26 miles from the Jakhau port when they were intercepted by the Coast Guard.

Suspicion has arisen primarily because the vessels were all inflatable rubber boats, which are not often the kind of boat fishermen in the Indian subcontinent use for fishing. Although visuals from the spot show that there are some fishing equipment — like fishing nets — on the boats, one has to wait for the Coast Guard investigation to reveal the truth.

Similar incidents in the past

The arrival of Pakistani nationals on boats in Indian waters is always met with a lot of scepticism and suspicion, primarily because the perpetrators of the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks — which came to be known as the 26/11 terror attacks because they began on November 26 — had arrived in the city by boat from Pakistan.

Subsequently, India has kept a sharp eye on waters between it and Pakistan, and managed to nab a number of Pakistani boats since then after they came into Indian waters, even their incursion into Indian waters has set intelligence and defence establishments on alert.

One of the most recent such incidents was in early October this year when Intelligence agencies warned of two suspicious Pakistani boats from Karachi headed towards either Gujarat or Maharashtra.