A Pakistan Naval Ship collision with a frontline Indian Naval warship in the North Arabian Sea on Tuesday evening has drawn a formal protest from New Delhi, after the Pakistani vessel closed in at high speed and manoeuvred, defence sources said, in a manner that was unprofessional and unsafe.

How The Pakistan Naval Ship Collision Happened

Defence sources said the Indian warship was on a routine surveillance mission when the Pakistani vessel approached it at high speed in international waters. The manoeuvring that followed led directly to the collision. No damage was reported on either side, the sources said.

The Ministry of External Affairs later confirmed the broad shape of that account, adding detail the initial reporting had not carried. Its own statement placed the incident in international waters and said it did not cause any major damage, matching the sourced reporting from the previous evening on both counts, while also going further than that reporting by assigning responsibility for the encounter directly to the Pakistani side.

New Delhi's Protest In South Block

The Pakistan Naval Ship collision triggered a same day response in New Delhi. According to the Ministry of External Affairs, the Charge d'Affaires of the High Commission for the Islamic Republic of Pakistan was summoned on Wednesday and a strong protest was lodged with him. The Ministry's language was blunt for a diplomatic statement, describing the conduct of the Pakistani naval ship as both unacceptable and unprofessional rather than reaching for the softer phrasing such notes often carry.

A single collision at sea, even one that causes no damage, does not usually draw a summons within 24 hours. That turnaround, on its own, signals how seriously South Block chose to treat the episode, and suggests the government wanted its position on record before speculation about the incident could harden into a competing narrative in Islamabad.

A 1991 Pact Invoked

That responsibility was not left vague. The Ministry said the conduct of the Pakistani naval ship was in contravention of Article 10 of the Agreement between India and Pakistan on Advance Notice on Military Exercises, Manoeuvres and Troop Movements, signed in April 1991.

That agreement is one of a set of military confidence building measures the two countries put in place in the years after their last full scale war, alongside a parallel pact on preventing air space violations by military aircraft. It commits each side to give advance notice of exercises, manoeuvres and troop movements near the international boundary and the Line of Control, precisely so as to avoid the kind of close encounter reported this week. Neither government has said publicly whether any advance notice was given ahead of Tuesday's manoeuvring, or whether the ship's movement even fell within the categories the 1991 agreement covers.

The Due Care Advisory

The Charge d'Affaires was advised to convey to the concerned Pakistani authorities the need for all military units to observe due care and respect the provisions of the relevant agreements between the two countries, the stated aim being to prevent a repeat of such incidents. No timeline was set for a response from Islamabad.

Coming Amid A Tense Run Of Encounters

This is not the only flashpoint New Delhi and Islamabad have traded notes over this year. Earlier this month, IDW reported on the continuing fallout from India's air strikes on Pakistani air bases during Operation Sindoor. A separate IDW report examined Pakistan's own Federal Investigation Agency dossier on wanted terror suspects, several of them designated by the United Nations. Islamabad has also been pressing partners for defence assurances, an issue IDW covered when it surfaced with Belgium earlier this month.

Set against that run of encounters, a naval collision followed within a day by a formal summons reads as more than a routine maritime mishap. The Indian Navy has not issued a separate statement of its own. Details of the Indian warship involved, described in every account so far only as a frontline unit on surveillance duty, have not been released, and the Ministry of Defence has likewise made no separate comment, leaving the Ministry of External Affairs statement as the government's only word on the episode for now.

New Delhi Mirrors The Protest In Islamabad

The Ministry said India's Charge d'Affaires in Islamabad has also been instructed to lodge a similar protest with Pakistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The diplomatic response, in other words, is running on both sides of the border at the same time. Neither Ministry has indicated whether any further conversation is planned beyond the two protest notes, and no joint statement has followed the Pakistan Naval Ship collision so far.