In what appears to be a case of suicide, a 19-year-old Naval sailor was found hanging onboard the INS Vikrant on Thursday morning.
“Prime facie, it appears to be a case of suicide. A statutory Board of Inquiry is being ordered," an official statement from the Navy said.
Apart from this, the case has also been registered with the police.
According to sources, the soldier was unmarried and hailed from Bihar’s Muzaffarpur, news agency PTI said.
In November 2022, a 25-year-old Indian Navy sailor allegedly committed suicide by shooting himself with his service pistol on a ship in the Mumbai harbour.
The sailor went to an isolated compartment on the ship and allegedly shot himself in the chest with his 9 mm service pistol.
Before this in July last year, a 19-year-oldsailor allegedly died suicide at INS Shivaji, the Indian Navy’s base near Lonavala in Pune district.
Akash Sainath Kannala was found to have hanged himself from ceiling fan by using a bedsheet at a recreation center on the base around 4.30 am, a police official said.
A total of 819 armed forces personnel have died from suicide in the last five years, with the Army reporting a maximum of 642 such cases, according to details provided by the government in 2022.
The Indian Air Force reported 148 cases of suicide in the said period, while the number in the Indian Navy was 29.