New Delhi, November 6
A sailor was killed and four others went missing after a torpedo recovery vessel of the Indian Navy (A 72) sunk 30 miles east of Visakhapatnam in the Bay of Bengal today. Twenty-three others have been rescued, while search is on for those missing.

The Navy said the vessel was on a routine mission to recover practice torpedoes — dummy non-explosive ones — fired by fleet ships during a routine exercise when the incident took place around 8 pm.

During the process, one of the valves in the engine room of the ship developed a problem and caused immediate flooding. Sources in the Navy ruled out explosion of torpedoes saying they are dummy ones.

The sunken ship was 23-metre long and 6.5 metre at the beam, very small by the Naval standards. It was built by Goa Shipyard Limited in 1983 and has served the Indian Navy for the past 31 years.

Major submarine accidents have rocked the Navy in the recent past. INS Sindhurakshak exploded at Mumbai harbour and sank in the naval dockyard on August 14, 2013, killing 18 crewmen on board. In February this year, two officers were killed in a mishap involving INS Sindhuratna when it was sailing 100 miles west of Mumbai. The then Navy Chief Admiral DK Joshi resigned after the incident.