Pakistan claims foiling Indian submarine's bid to enter territorial waters

ISLAMABAD (AA) – Pakistan on Thursday claimed it foiled an Indian submarine’s attempt to breach its territorial waters on March 1.

India deployed its submarine against Pakistan with “ulterior motives,” a spokesperson for the Pakistani military said in a statement.

Amid an ongoing naval drill and “prevailing security environment,” Pakistan was aware of the possibility of India trying to enter its maritime zone for reconnaissance, said Maj. Gen. Babar Iftikhar.

The Pakistan Navy enforced “strict monitoring … and stringent vigilance procedures” and “prematurely intercepted and tracked the latest Indian submarine Kalvari,” he said.

“Yet again through continuous vigilance and professionalism Pakistan Navy has foiled (an) Indian submarine’s attempt of entering into Pakistani waters,” he added.

The spokesperson pointed out that this was the fourth attempted Indian incursion thwarted by the Pakistan Navy in the past five years.

India is yet to comment on the matter.

The last such incident was in October 2021 in the northern part of the Arabian Sea.

Nuclear rivals and neighbors Pakistan and India have been locked in a string of disputes since the division of the Indian subcontinent in 1947, the most prominent being over the disputed Himalayan valley of Jammu and Kashmir.

Both hold parts of the region but claim it in full, while a small sliver of Kashmir is also held by China.

Pakistan and India have fought three full-scale wars – 1948, 1965 and 1971 – and two of them were over Kashmir.

Already fraught relations between the neighbors have further plummeted since New Delhi scrapped the special status of Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir in August 2019.

* Writing by Islamuddin Sajid