INS Khukri was sunk off Diu by the Pakistani submarine Hangor on 9 December 1971, with the loss of 18 officers and 176 sailors.
The frigate and the submarine
INS Khukri, a British-built Blackwood class anti-submarine frigate, sank on the night of 9 December 1971 with 18 officers and 176 sailors. Commissioned on 16 July 1958, she was part of the force sent to hunt a Pakistani submarine in the Arabian Sea.
That submarine was PNS Hangor, under Commander Ahmed Tasnim. She had sailed from Karachi on 22 November and was patrolling off the Kathiawar coast. Khukri was in company with INS Kirpan, moving at 12 knots and testing an improved sonar.
Torpedoes off Diu
Hangor fired her first homing torpedo at 1957. It failed to explode. A second torpedo struck Khukri, and she went down within about two minutes. Kirpan turned away and fired mortars that stopped working after a few salvos.
The sources do not agree on the details. Hangor's account puts the hit at 2019, while Vice Admiral S.N. Kohli, the Flag Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Western Naval Command, gave 2055 as the time of sinking. Accounts differ on how many torpedoes struck. Published distances from Diu range from about 30 miles to 100 nautical miles, the latter in a 2023 Navy statement.
Captain Mahendra Nath Mulla, the Commanding Officer, stayed on the bridge as the ship went down. He was awarded the Maha Vir Chakra posthumously.
Survivors, the memorial and the wreck
Kirpan and INS Katchall returned to the scene the next morning. Six officers and 61 sailors survived.
A memorial with a scale model of the ship was inaugurated on a hillock at Diu on 15 December 1999. A second INS Khukri, a missile corvette commissioned on 23 August 1989 with Captain Mulla's widow Sudha Mulla present, was decommissioned on 23 December 2021 and towed to Diu, where she opened as a museum on 11 June 2022.
On 11 February 2023, divers from INS Nireekshak placed three wreaths on the wreck, which lies at a depth of about 80 metres.
Cover image: Indian Navy, GODL-India, via Wikimedia Commons. Resized for this page. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:INS_Khukri_(F149).jpg