“Defender of the seas meets fiery end,” said The Hindustan Times, while the Times of India called it India’s “worst peacetime disaster”.
The world’s biggest democracy has been expanding its armed forces to upgrade its mostly Soviet-era weaponry and respond to what many in India perceive as a growing threat from regional rival China.
Defence Minister A.K. Antony described the explosion as the “greatest tragedy in recent time”.
Navy chief D.K. Joshi said Wednesday that no sign of life had been detected on board since the submarine was engulfed in a fireball.
“While we hope for the best, we have to prepare for the worst,” he told reporters in Mumbai, adding that some crew might have found air pockets but “the indicators are negative”.
Defence ministry spokesman Sitanshu Kar told AFP late Wednesday: “We have not got the bodies so we can’t say they are dead. But we are fearing the worst.”
Amateur video footage showed a fireball in the forward section of the Sindhurakshak, where torpedoes and missiles are stored as well as battery units.
A board of enquiry has been set up to probe the cause of the explosions, and will look at the possibility of sabotage, but “the indicators at this point of time do not support that theory”, Joshi said.
Other sailors on vessels berthed near the INS Sindhurakshak were admitted to a navy hospital in Mumbai with burns.
In February 2010, the vessel suffered a fire while docked in Visakhapatnam city in southern India, killing a 24-year-old sailor.
The Indian navy has 15 submarines, but just seven to nine are operational at any one time because of regular repair and refitting operations. Many are at the end of their service lives and have been given extensions.
Joshi admitted that the loss of the Sindhurakshak had left a “dent” in the navy’s capabilities.
The disaster has echoes of a tragedy in Russia in 2000 when the Kursk nuclear submarine sank in the Barents Sea with the loss of all 118 crew on board.
Russia is still the biggest military supplier to India, but relations have been strained recently by major delays and cost overruns with a refurbished aircraft carrier, the INS Vikramaditya.
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