The Indian Navy Has Seen 3,765 Merchant Ships Safely Through the Gulf of Aden and Off East Africa Since 2008, Under the SAGAR and MAHASAGAR Visions for the Indian Ocean

Since 2008, Indian warships on anti-piracy duty in the Gulf of Aden and along the East African coast have seen 3,765 merchant vessels through safely and protected more than 27,260 seafarers, according to a Press Information Bureau (PIB) paper dated 3 December 2025. Those patrols are the oldest part of a wider Indian Ocean effort that now includes a stated doctrine, an information centre near Delhi, home-built warships and port projects in four countries.

Where the oil and the containers go

On 12 March 2015, in Mauritius, the Prime Minister said the Indian Ocean carries two-thirds of the world’s oil shipments, one-third of its bulk cargo and half of its container traffic. That is a 2015 official estimate, so newer figures help. UNCTAD’s Review of Maritime Transport 2025 puts global seaborne trade at 12,720 million tons in 2024, up 2.2 per cent on 2023. It also says the detour around the Cape of Good Hope, taken to avoid the Red Sea, added about 30 per cent to voyage lengths on container routes between East Asia and Europe.

For oil, the International Energy Agency’s Strait of Hormuz factsheet, last updated in February 2026, says an average of 20 million barrels a day of crude and oil products moved through the strait in 2025. That is around 25 per cent of the world’s seaborne oil trade, with 80 per cent of it going to Asia. China and India together received 44 per cent of the crude exported through the strait.

India’s own exposure is documented in the same PIB paper. The country has about 11,098 kilometres of coastline and a 2.4 million sq km exclusive economic zone (the waters where it holds fishing and resource rights), and 90 per cent of its trade moves by sea. At the Navy’s Commanders’ Conference on 29 September 2026, the Defence Minister said India brings in about 85 to 90 per cent of its crude oil and around half of its natural gas by maritime routes.

Ten years from SAGAR to MAHASAGAR

SAGAR dates to 12 March 2015, when the Prime Minister commissioned the ship Barracuda into Mauritius’s National Coast Guard, a vessel that had sailed from Kolkata. In that speech he gave the Indian Ocean a name for India’s policy: SAGAR, short for Security and Growth for All in the Region. He listed five strands, which were defending India’s own coast and islands, deepening security and economic cooperation with maritime neighbours, collective action through bodies such as the Indian Ocean Naval Symposium (35 navies by then, as he put it), sustainable development and the blue economy, and dialogue with outside powers that have interests in the region. He also placed India’s maritime tradition at Lothal in Gujarat, which he called one of the earliest seaports in the world.

Ten years later, on 12 March 2025, the Prime Minister returned to Mauritius and announced MAHASAGAR, short for Mutual and Holistic Advancement for Security and Growth Across Regions. In the PIB’s English translation of his Hindi remarks, he said the vision would go beyond SAGAR to the Global South and would cover trade for development, capacity building and mutual security, with technology sharing, concessional loans and grants. The same statement committed India to help Mauritius set up a Police Academy and a National Maritime Information Sharing Centre, and to support the security of Mauritius’s exclusive economic zone.

The Navy announced named activities within two weeks. A PIB release of 24 March 2025 described Indian Ocean Ship Sagar, in which INS Sunayna would carry a combined crew from India and nine countries (Comoros, Kenya, Madagascar, Maldives, Mauritius, Mozambique, Seychelles, Sri Lanka and South Africa) and jointly watch over the exclusive economic zones of Tanzania, Mozambique, Mauritius and Seychelles. It also announced AIKEYME, the Africa India Key Maritime Engagement, co-hosted with Tanzania’s defence forces at Dar es Salaam, with practice in piracy response and information sharing.

The fusion centre in Gurugram

The Information Fusion Centre for the Indian Ocean Region (IFC-IOR) was inaugurated at Gurugram on 22 December 2018. It is a place where liaison officers from partner navies work together on threats to maritime safety and security, among them piracy, armed robbery at sea, smuggling and illegal migration. A PIB release of 12 September 2023 said liaison officers from twelve countries were posted there: Australia, France, Italy, Japan, Maldives, Mauritius, Myanmar, Seychelles, Singapore, Sri Lanka, the United Kingdom and the United States. It added that the centre worked with 42 other maritime security groupings and 25 partner countries, and that its Maritime Information Sharing Workshop, set for 14 to 16 September 2023, was to bring together 31 countries. The India-Germany Joint Statement of 12 January 2026 records Germany’s decision to post a liaison officer to IFC-IOR.

The centre also plugs into the Quad’s maritime programme. The Quad (Australia, India, Japan and the United States) announced its Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness in 2022. In the Wilmington Declaration of 21 September 2024, the four leaders said the programme had been extended to the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency, partners in Southeast Asia and IFC-IOR, and that well over two dozen countries could now reach data on dark vessels (ships not broadcasting their position). They also announced a training initiative, MAITRI, and said they looked forward to India hosting its first workshop in 2025.

The patrols, from the Gulf of Aden to Hormuz

PIB’s Op Sankalp release gives the most detailed count. The release says the Navy widened its maritime security operations in mid-December 2023 in response to the Israel-Hamas conflict’s effects at sea, and acted when the Malta-flagged bulk carrier MV Ruen was hijacked on 14 December. In the 100 days to 23 March 2024 it responded to 18 incidents. The release lists more than 110 lives saved, 45 of them Indian seafarers, 15 lakh tons of commodities escorted, nearly 1,000 boarding operations and more than 3,000 kg of narcotics seized.

The Ruen episode ended on 16 March 2024. A gallantry citation published by the PIB says a Navy commando team (MARCOS) was dropped from an Air Force C-17 transport aircraft about 1,400 nautical miles off Mumbai, boarded the ship, rescued all 17 crew and apprehended 35 pirates.

In 2026 the Navy’s escort work moved to West Asia. The Defence Minister said at Visakhapatnam on 11 July 2026 that under Operation Urja Suraksha the Navy had escorted 18 merchant vessels carrying essential cargo worth over Rs 9,000 crore. On 29 September 2026 he singled out the safe passage of Indian-flagged LPG tankers through the Strait of Hormuz under the same operation.

Warships built at home

INS Vikrant, India’s first home-built aircraft carrier, was commissioned at Kochi on 2 September 2022. Cochin Shipyard built it, with 76 per cent indigenous content and about 30,000 tonnes of steel from the Steel Authority of India. In March 2025 a Sea King helicopter from Vikrant winched three injured crew off the bulk carrier MV Heilan Star, 230 nautical miles west of Goa.

The PIB paper of December 2025 lists four Project 15B guided-missile destroyers, INS Visakhapatnam (November 2021), INS Mormugao (December 2022), INS Imphal (December 2023) and INS Surat (January 2025). Under Project 17A, INS Nilgiri joined in January 2025, INS Udaygiri and INS Himgiri in August 2025 (the 100th and 101st indigenous warships) and, per the PIB release of 11 July 2026, INS Taragiri in April, INS Dunagiri in June and INS Mahendragiri on 11 July 2026. Mahendragiri is the sixth of its class in about a year and a half. It displaces roughly 6,670 tonnes, has over 75 per cent indigenous content, and the Chief of the Naval Staff said launch-to-delivery time fell from 63 months to 31.

The December 2025 paper adds that 51 large ships were under construction in India at about Rs 90,000 crore. On 29 September 2026 the Defence Minister said 2026 was planned as the Navy’s largest single-year addition, with 18 warships to be inducted or commissioned. Our list of the nine ships commissioned between February and October 2026 carries the dates and builders.

Ports abroad: Agalega, Sittwe, Chabahar and Colombo

On 29 February 2024 the Prime Minister and Mauritius’s Prime Minister jointly opened, by video link, a new airstrip and the St James Jetty on Agalega, an island of Mauritius, with six community projects. The PIB release says the aim was better links with the main island, stronger maritime security and development. In the 12 March 2025 statement the Prime Minister said the improved connectivity had let aid reach Agalega quickly after Cyclone Chido and that many lives were saved. The same statement commits India to preserving the Girmitiya heritage in Mauritius, the legacy of the indenture contract told in our piece on the girmit system.

Sittwe in Myanmar is part of the Kaladan project, which links Kolkata to Sittwe by sea, then Paletwa by river and Mizoram by road. The Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways annual report for 2024-25 says Sittwe was inaugurated on 9 May 2023 and that India Ports Global Limited (IPGL), a government-owned company, has managed it since April 2024.

At Chabahar in Iran, IPGL signed a ten-year contract with Iran’s Ports and Maritime Organization in May 2024 to operate the Shahid Beheshti terminal. The same annual report records 60,000 TEUs (standard container units) and 1.9 million tons of other cargo in 2023-24, with vessel traffic up 43 per cent and container traffic up 34 per cent, and says the port had handled 134,086 TEUs and 8.79 million tons by October 2024. The next stage is still being worked out. On 17 July 2026 the Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson said a waiver granted by the United States had expired and that talks with stakeholders on the way forward continued, adding that the terminal had suffered no damage. Business Standard’s report of that briefing says India operated the terminal until April.

In Sri Lanka, Adani Ports announced on 30 September 2026 that Colombo West International Terminal had doubled capacity from 1.6 million to 3.2 million TEUs in a USD 750 million second phase. The company says the terminal handled 2 million TEUs in its first 18 months and is run under a 35-year build-operate-transfer concession with John Keells Holdings and the Sri Lanka Ports Authority.

Exercises and a task force under Indian command

The Navy hosted MILAN 24 in February 2024, a multinational exercise that PIB says drew over 36 ships, two submarines, 55 aircraft and senior leaders from 47 countries. INS Vikrant then took part in Varuna 25 with the French carrier strike group Charles de Gaulle in March 2025, held Exercise Konkan 2025 with the Royal Navy off Mumbai and joined TROPEX 2025, which involved more than 150 ships, submarines and aircraft. Germany’s January 2026 joint statement noted its intent to join MILAN in February 2026.

The Navy has also taken command of Combined Task Force 154, the training task force of the Combined Maritime Forces. Under Indian command it ran Operation Southern Readiness at Kochi, which, the Defence Minister said on 29 September 2026, involved 276 personnel from 27 countries, 76 facilitators and subject-matter experts, and four international organisations.