The Indian Navy’s Sail Training Ship INS Tarangini arrived at Colombo on March 6, having been diverted mid-passage to assist in Search and Rescue operations for IRIS Dena, an Iranian naval vessel that sent a distress call from Sri Lankan waters on March 4.
The distress call was received at MRCC Colombo in the early hours of March 4, as reported by the Sri Lankan Navy. IRIS Dena was in trouble approximately 20 nautical miles west of Galle, within the SAR region under Sri Lankan jurisdiction. Sri Lanka took the lead as the designated SAR authority for those waters. India moved swiftly to support.
By 1000 hours, a long-range maritime patrol aircraft was airborne over the search area, augmenting efforts already underway. A second aircraft — with air-droppable life rafts — was placed on immediate standby. INS Tarangini was diverted to the scene and arrived in the search area by 1600 hours that afternoon. Sri Lankan Navy vessels and other agencies had by then conducted the primary rescue. The search for missing personnel, however, was not over.
INS Ikshak has since sailed from Kochi to extend the operation. The vessel remains in the area, continuing to search for those still unaccounted for—a humanitarian commitment the Indian Navy has described as a measure for shipwrecked personnel, independent of any political context.
Coordination with Sri Lankan authorities remains ongoing.
How IRIS Dena Came to Be in Those Waters
IRIS Dena’s presence in the Indian Ocean was not incidental. The Iranian naval vessel had, days earlier, participated in MILAN 2026 — India’s flagship multilateral naval exercise hosted at Visakhapatnam. The sea phase of the exercise concluded on February 24. When it ended, participating vessels dispersed. IRIS Dena departed the Vizag coast, and India’s obligations as host nation ended at that point — cleanly and completely, at the waterline.
In the days that followed, the vessel was observed loitering in international waters rather than proceeding homeward — a pattern assessed as consistent with Iran’s broader operational positioning in the region. IRIS Dena’s last port of call was Hambantota, on Sri Lanka’s southern coast.
Three days after MILAN concluded, on February 27, a military confrontation between the United States, Israel, and Iran broke out. India had no part in it. On the morning of February 28 — eight days after the Indian exercise had ended — IRIS Dena was struck in international waters in an attack attributed to U.S. forces. The vessel, already assessed as part of Iran’s naval posture against American forces in the region, had been in those waters on Tehran’s orders, not India’s.
INS Tarangini had sailed from Trincomalee on a bilateral training passage with Sri Lankan Navy trainee officers embarked — part of the sustained professional exchange the two navies maintain. That the same vessel ended up in a SAR operation coordinated through MRCC Colombo, with Sri Lankan and Indian assets working in close coordination, is less a coincidence than a reflection of what years of maritime engagement actually produce—the ability to act together, without hesitation, when the sea demands it.
