A senior Coast Guard official said the IMB, a non-profit organisation based at Kuala Lampur in Malyasia was the first to contact the Indian Coast Guard on October 27 after the ship went missing on October 22. A second alert was sounded on November 3 after the 17-member crew of the Japanese-owned cargo vessel were found alive near southern Thailand after drifting for 11 days in an inflatable life raft.

The IMB, a specialised division of the International Chamber of Commerce, provided a report to the Coast Guard on the movement of the pirates and the ship. Initially, a reward of $100,000 was announced by the organisation for any information or effort to salvage the ship, said Coast Guard officials.The IMB sounded a third alert onNovember 10 after it was informed by the Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre in Sri Lanka that a ship which matched the hijacked vessel's description was sighted off Colombo. The reward was immediately doubled to $200,000.

``We are still not sure if the Coast Guard will be given the reward,'' remarked a senior Coast Guard official, requesting anonymity. The one-year-old vessel, the MV Alondra Rainbow, is valued at around US $10 million. It carried a cargo of aluminium ignots worth another $10 billion.The IMB anti-piracy centre was set up in 1992. It is financed by voluntary contributions from shipping and insurance companies.

Officials added that Nippon Foundation, a charitable organisation in Japan, has also played an important role in gathering information on pirates and providing it to the IMB for further action, particularly in the pirate-infested Straits of Malacca and other regional waters.

Since 1968, Nippon Foundation has spent more than three billion yen to bring pirates to book. Besides, alarge amount of money has been allocated to create public awareness on the issue, sources said.

Piracy became a major issue in safety navigation in Japan after the hijacking of Japanese cargo vessel Tenya Maru off the Sumatra coast last year. The entire 15-member crew of that vessel was killed by hijackers.

Nippon Foundation's role in solving the present crisis assumes significance in light of the fact that two of the MV Alondra Rainbow's crew members were Japanese. The other 15 were Filipinos.