Article Posted on : - May 10, 2014

MUMBAI (PTI): Four persons, including two Navy personnel, suffered minor injuries after a fire broke out onboard INS Ganga during a routine maintenance and refit work at the Naval Dockyard here on Friday.

This is the 15th mishap onboard a naval vessel in the past ten months.

While naval sources said the incident took place at around 11.15 this morning when some welding work was underway, an official statement denied that there was a fire, and added that all the four personnel were discharged from the hospital after "precautionary check-up".

"The welding gun took time to ignite and when it did, thick flames erupted from the gun, injuring four people including two civilians," the sources said.

"It was a minor accident in which four people sustained burns. They were taken to the naval dispensary for first-aid and were discharged later," the sources added.

An official statement from the Navy described the incident as "a loud noise in the boiler room" while the ship was in the dry-dock undergoing repairs and refit.

"The cause of the loud noise is possibly due to gas accumulation. There has been no fire or any damage to any equipment in the ship," it said.

Two sailors and two civilian dockyard workers were taken to hospital, only for precautionary check-up, and were immediately discharged and the situation was normal, it added.

INS Ganga had been deployed in the Gulf of Eden in 2012 to protect merchant ships from attacks of Somali pirates.

The Indian Navy has witnessed a spate of mishaps in the past ten months, which led to Chief of Naval Staff Admiral D K Joshi to resign in February.

Two Navy personnel were killed and seven sailors were injured in the fire onboard Russian made submarine INS Sindhuratna on February 26.

On August 14 last year, there was an explosion on the Russian-made Kilo-class submarine INS Sindhurakshak. Of the eighteen Navy personnel including three officers who were on board, bodies of only eleven personnel were found.