India Halts Pakistan-Bound Chinese Ship Over Missile Program Fears

In this file photo, a worker watches operations at the container off-loading terminal in the Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT) premises in Mumbai, India. (Indranil Mukherjee/AFP via Getty Images)

NEW DELHI—Indian officials confirmed on March 2 that India stopped a Pakistan-bound ship from China on Jan. 23 over suspicions that it carried machines for use in Pakistan’s nuclear and ballistic program. Indian security agencies allege that the ship was carrying restricted military-grade material likely for use in Pakistan’s missile development program.

Indian news reports termed the cargo a “dual-use consignment” and said that the merchant ship, the CMA CGM Attila, which is registered in Malta and set sail from China, was bound for Pakistan’s southern port of Karachi. Indian intelligence agencies reportedly tipped off Indian customs officials, who found the vessel to be carrying a shipment that included a computer numerical control (CNC) machine manufactured by an Italian company.

The shipment was studied by India’s premier military R&D agency, the New Delhi-based Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), which submitted an official report on March 4. The DRDO report corroborated earlier reports that the vessel was carrying a CNC machine, according to the latest details from the Indian media. The Epoch Times reached out to DRDO for confirmation about the release of its report but didn’t get a reply by press time.

Retired Capt. Kamlesh Kumar Agnihotri, an Indian Navy veteran and a senior fellow with India’s National Maritime Foundation, told The Epoch Times that a CNC machine can manufacture any number of machinery parts and components with extreme accuracy and is of high value in military production.

“The precision manufacturing capability of such machines makes them very useful in [the] production of high-accuracy weapon parts,” Mr. Agnihotri said. “The CNC machines are therefore included as restricted items under [the] Wassenaar Arrangement list.”

The Wassenaar Arrangement, an international export control regime involving 42 countries, aims to stop the proliferation of equipment and technologies of dual-use nature. According to the Indian expert, the multilateral agreement made it possible for India, as a member country, to take action to board, inspect, seize cargo of, and take further legal action against the suspicious ship.

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Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has denounced the Indian allegations as an “unjustified seizure.” Its spokesperson said in a statement on March 2 that the incident was a “simple case” involving a commercial lathe machine imported by a Karachi-based “commercial entity” that supplies parts to the automobile industry in Pakistan.

“Pakistan condemns India’s high handedness in seizure of commercial goods. This disruption of free trade underscores the dangers inherent in arbitrary assumption of policing roles by states with dubious credentials,” the Pakistani spokesperson said.

However, a bill of loading obtained and published by the Times of India lists the consigner to be “Shanghai JXE Global Logistics Co Ltd” and the consignee as “Pakistan Wings Pvt Ltd” of Sialkot, a noncoastal Pakistani city more than 816 miles away from Karachi.

Explaining the logistics surrounding the seizure, Mr. Agnihotri told The Epoch Times that medium-sized merchant ships usually carry between 20,000 and 60,000 metric tons of cargo.

In addition, the Nhava Sheva port—also called the Jawaharlal Nehru Port Authority (JNPA)—is a busy port, with about 30 ships offloading at any given time. According to the JNPA website, the port accounts for about 50 percent of the total containerized cargo volume across the major ports of India. Last month alone, it handled 7.4 million metric tons of traffic. Therefore, Indian customs wouldn’t intercept a particular consignment in a fully loaded ship without a specific tip-off.

“The Indian agencies possibly got an intelligence input under some international collaborative mechanism, like the ‘Proliferation Security Initiative’ which is a U.S.-led global effort to stop trafficking of material related to weapons of mass destruction,” Mr. Agnihotri said, adding that in such dual-use restricted consignments, documents such as the bill of loading are usually falsified.

“[The] full picture will only become clear after due investigations are completed and reports are made open to the international community by the Indian agencies.”

Not the 1st Time

This isn’t the first time that India has intercepted a Pakistan-bound ship alleging that it contained dual-use military-grade items. The Indian expert called such incidents a threat to India. Pakistan and India have an adversarial relationship, thus the issues are perceived as a threat to India’s national security.

Mr. Agnihotri cited an incident in July 1999 in which a North Korean ship, the Ku-Wol Song, was similarly detained by Indian authorities at the Kandla Port in Gujarat along the Arabian Sea coast. He claimed that the ship was transporting about 127 tons of nuclear weapon components and associated documents for Pakistan, under a false cargo declaration of “water purification equipment.”

“It can thus be inferred that this game has been going on for a long time. These few seizures only point to the tip of the iceberg, because so many shipments could have been shipped to Pakistan undetected,” Mr. Agnihotri said.

“A thriving Pakistani nuclear weapons and missile program is a clear testimony of the success of the collusive proliferation efforts of its supporting partners.”

The Times of India reported on a more recent incident in February 2020, when India intercepted a Chinese ship supplying an autoclave to Pakistan under the cover of an “industrial dryer.”

Autoclaves are high-pressure chambers that can be used to mold materials under very high pressure and temperature, according to Mr. Agnihotri. In the context of the manufacture of military equipment, they are used to build missile propulsion motor casings and parts, turbine blades, gun barrels, and other components that have to endure extreme operating conditions.

It isn’t known how the material seized in 2020 was disposed of. However, the Indian expert said Pakistan could have legally contested the seizure.

Mr. Agnihotri said the seized ship, which was carrying other legitimate consignments, was released for its onward voyage after an initial investigation by Indian authorities was carried out. It was allowed to proceed after they were provided with some sort of financial guarantee by the ship’s agent, along with a commitment that the crew and the ship’s owner would make themselves available to face legal procedures when called upon to do so.

Further progress in the 2020 case, if any, isn’t known, he said. Nonetheless, if Pakistani authorities “are telling the truth, they can take recourse of legal action at the UN-mandated legal bodies” to have the shipment released, he said.