The 35 Somali pirates who were captured on a hijacked ship by Indian navy forces will be taken to India to face prosecution.

The captured pirates will arrive in the Asian country on Saturday, March 23, an Indian navy official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

After arriving in India, the official says that the pirates will be handed over to law enforcement agencies, to face charges that are not yet clear.

This is a departure from India’s practice of rescuing hijacked vessels and its crews and leaving the disarmed pirates at sea.

Indian navy seize hijacked ship

Indian Navy forces on Saturday, March 16 successfully seized a cargo vessel that had been hijacked by the said Somali pirates.

The navy said in a post on X (formerly Twitter) that they had successfully cornered and coerced all the 35 pirates to surrender.

The navy also said that they ensured the safe evacuation of all the 17 crew members from the pirate vessel without any injury.

“#INSKolkata had carried out the interception of the Pirate Ship Ruen almost 1400 nm (2600km) from the Indian Coast, and forced the pirate ship to stop through calibrated actions which were augmented by #INSSubhadra, HALE RPA, P8I maritime patrol aircraft & #MARCOS PRAHARs air-dropped by C-17 aircraft,” the Indian navy posted.

The cargo vessel has since been checked for any presence of illegal arms, ammunition and contraband. MV Ruen was hijacked last year.

The European Union Naval Forces last week said that MV Ruen may have been involved in another hijacking of the Bangladesh-flagged Bulk carrier merchant vessel ABDULLAH.