The strike mission was called off after the issue got resolved, but it has come to light that the Navy had prepared for any extreme eventuality and readied one its most modern warships, the guided missile destroyer INS Delhi, for a fast dash to the Somali coast.

A crack team of the Navy’s elite anti-terror special operations unit, which is trained for operations on oil rigs and merchant ships, was placed on board the INS Delhi on Thursday morning.

Officers and sailors of the warship who had gone on leave were called back on ‘emergency duty’ for the mission.

Sources confirmed that the heavily armed warship, which carries two Sea King helicopters and reaches speeds greater thab 32 knots, was hours away from deployment when the situation deescalated.

However, the INS Mumbai, another Delhi class destroyer, was asked to head to Somalia to keep track of the hijacked ship. INS Mumbai was already in African waters as it was returning from an exercise with the South Africa and Brazil navies, although it did not have a MARCOS team onboard

While a rescue mission to Somalia would have required an approval from the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS), the incident shows that the Navy was prepared to launch what would have been its first ever strike operation at such a distance from Indian waters.

Besides the IPKF operations in Sri Lanka between 1987-1990, the only other time MARCOS operated beyond Indian waters was near Maldives during Operation Cactus in 1988.