Raised in February 1987 as the Indian Marine Special Force, the Navy's Marine Commandos operate at sea, in the air and on land.
The Indian Marine Special Force, February 1987
The Marine Commando Force was raised in February 1987 as the Indian Marine Special Force, intended to operate at sea, in the air and on land. Its first members were three officers who had volunteered from the Navy's diving branch and trained with the US Navy SEALs at Coronado, California.
The force was co-located with INS Abhimanyu at Mumbai. It later became the Marine Commando Force, a change the Navy says was meant to give it an element of individuality, and the abbreviation MARCOS followed. Sources disagree on the year of the renaming, with 1989 and 1991 both published.
Jaffna, Mumbai and Jammu and Kashmir
The new unit saw action within months. It went to Sri Lanka in 1987 with the Indian Peace Keeping Force. On 21 October 1987, Lieutenant Arvind Singh led a team tasked with destroying the Guru Nagar jetty and speed boats at Jaffna, and he received the Maha Vir Chakra.
During the November 2008 attacks in Mumbai, Marine Commandos went into the Taj Mahal Hotel. Praveen Kumar Teotia, then serving with the force, received the Shaurya Chakra for his actions there.
Navy citations also record Marine Commando teams serving in Jammu and Kashmir under Operation Rakshak, including a deployment from November 2018 to April 2019.
INS Karna and the MV Ruen
On 12 July 2016, Admiral Sunil Lanba, Chief of the Naval Staff, commissioned the Marine Commandos unit at Bheemunipatnam as INS Karna, under Captain Varun Singh.
In March 2024 the force was sent against the pirate-held MV Ruen, some 1,400 nautical miles from the Indian mainland. INS Kolkata stopped the ship on 15 March. The next afternoon a C-17 of the Indian Air Force air-dropped Marine Commandos into the area.
All 35 pirates surrendered on 16 March, and all 17 crew members were evacuated without injury.
Cover image: Indian Navy, GODL-India, via Wikimedia Commons. Resized for this page. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Indian_Navy_MARCOS_rescuing_hijacked_Bulgaria-owned_vessel_MV_Ruen.jpg