Was it a suspect Pakistan boat? Does it make a difference if it sank or was blown up?

"Let me tell you... I hope you remember December 31 night. We blew off that Pakistan... We have blown them off... I was there at Gandhinagar and I told at night... Blow that boat off. We don't want to serve them biryani." 

BK Loshali, deputy inspector general Coast Guard's boast has stirred a hornet's nest. All along the Coast Guard and Manohar Parrikar, the defence minister were insisting that the boat blew itself off - whether by design or accidentally.

The Coast Guard has ordered a probe into DIG Loshali's statement made before an audience at the launch of Indian Coast Guard interceptor craft ICGS C-421. Coast Guard officials say DIG Loshali is the chief of staff of the Coast Guard Region - North West. He handles all staff related activities and not operations. He was neither in the direct chain of command nor in the loop during operations. However, Coast Guard is silent on whether he was in the Ops Room that night of December 31 with the top man not in chair.

Coast Guard officials say a probe will attempt to find out whether Loshali was bragging or was he actually directing the operation. The probe will sift through communication between the ship and shore. "Loshali will be attached and asked to step aside pending inquiry. Then the probe team will speak to the commanding officer of CGS Rajratan, the Ops room team and the NTRO officials who generated the intelligence," sources said. Parrikar stands by his January statement, it was a suspect Pakistani boat that was intercepted and then itself destructed. He insists at best it is a case of indiscipline against the officer.

In January Parrikar had gone on record to suggest a suspected terror link where the occupants of the boat dressed in what appeared to be some kind of a military sea rig could have consumed cyanide to escape arrest. Top sources in the Coast Guard in early January shared NTRO input that spoke of a suspicious boat leaving the Keti Bundar near Karachi and being tracked from the sky by a coast Guard Dornier aircraft. NTRO sources insisted their inputs were solid about suspicious activity - may or may not be linked to terror. Like on Wednesday at Bangalore, even then Parrikar had insisted evidence of suspicious activity of the "rogue boat" could be shared at the appropriate time.

Let us look at the bare facts of the case so far. That the boat was being tracked by NTRO is not in dispute. That both the NTRO and the Coast Guard monitored the movement of the boat for more than 12 hours is not in dispute. Neither is the Coast Guard contention that the boat was loitering around suspiciously in an area on the high seas which is neither used for smuggling diesel or drugs.

Only the Coast Guard Commander of CGS Rajratan and the Coast Guard officers directly in chain of command are in the loop on what exactly transpired that night on the high seas. Coast Guard in a statement did say that they chased the boat when it did not stop despite a specific command. This raised suspicion. There are some questions that need to be answered:

1) Did NTRO generate intelligence about a suspect Pakistani boat leaving Keti Bundar?

2) Did NTRO and Coast Guard track that boat?

3) Did Coast Guard Dornier alert CG Ship Rajratan about suspicious loitering of boat?

4) Did Coast Guard commander try to intercept the boat?

5) Did the suspicious Pakistani vessel try to escape? Was there a chase?

If yes, does it make a difference the boat went down on its own or was brought down?

Pakistan was quick to react to the controversy. Pakistan's defence minister Khawaja Asif told journalists that the incident had torn the veil of India's claim of being a peaceful country. "…Pakistan's desire for peace and coexistence in the region must not be seen as our weakness. International community must also take notice of the incident which is tearing off India's veil of being a peaceful country of the region," Pakistan's defence ministry release stated.

Parrikar's ministry certainly needs to get its act together. Congress leader Manish Tewari has raised a fair point asking whether this was a deliberate operation to create a macho image for the new regime. The government should come clean.