India Rejects Pakistan's Account of Arabian Sea Warship Collision, Calls It 'Usual Prevarication'

India's Ministry of External Affairs, on September 18, 2026, formally rejected Pakistan's version of the September 15 collision between the Indian Navy destroyer INS Kolkata and the Pakistan Navy vessel PNS Hunain in the North Arabian Sea, after Pakistan's Foreign Office had summoned India's Chargé d'Affaires in Islamabad to protest what it called an unsafe manoeuvre by the Indian warship inside Pakistan's Exclusive Economic Zone. MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal dismissed Pakistan's allegations as 'the usual prevarication that we expected,' reiterating India's account that PNS Hunain carried out a dangerous, high-speed overtaking manoeuvre that violated both Article 10 of the 1991 India-Pakistan Agreement on Advance Notice on Military Exercises, Manoeuvres and Troop Movements — which bars naval units from operating within three nautical miles of each other — and the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea (COLREGS). Jaiswal said the collision caused no major damage to INS Kolkata, which remained at sea and continued its deployment. Pakistan's Foreign Office had not issued a further rebuttal as of September 18. Analysts, including in Al Jazeera commentary published September 17, flagged the incident as the first direct India-Pakistan military encounter since the May 2025 four-day conflict and warned of the risk of unintended escalation from disputed naval encounters.