The Indian Naval Ship Airavat has arrived in Colombo on a three-day visit, carrying critical spares for Sri Lanka Coast Guard vessel Suraksha and essential items for the Sri Lanka Navy under a grant from the Government of India, the Indian High Commission in Colombo said on Monday.
According to the High Commission statement cited by Ada Derana, the grant underscores the close maritime partnership between India and Sri Lanka. The High Commission did not detail the dollar value of the spares being delivered or the engineering schedule for the Suraksha refit, but the consignment is the latest in a steady chain of materiel and training support India has channelled to the Sri Lanka Navy and Coast Guard.
INS Airavat is a 5,600-tonne Shardul-class amphibious landing ship, normally based at Visakhapatnam under the Indian Navy’s Eastern Naval Command. It has been a frequent visitor to Colombo and other Indian Ocean ports, both as a logistics carrier and during humanitarian-and-disaster-relief deployments.
The port call lands amid an intensifying Indian Ocean diplomatic conversation in which Sri Lanka has tried to keep the strategic balance even-handed. Defence Secretary Sampath Thuyacontha used a Colombo conference last week to reiterate Sri Lanka’s commitment to non-alignment and the Indian Ocean as a zone of peace, echoing similar remarks he delivered earlier at the 14th International Meeting of High-Ranking Security Officials in Moscow. The Airavat visit is also the latest in a sustained pattern of India–Sri Lanka maritime engagement that included the recent India–Sri Lanka DIVEX 2026 diving exercise.
The Sri Lanka Coast Guard, which operates the Suraksha and a small fleet of patrol and fast-attack craft, is the lead agency for fisheries protection and counter-narcotics interdiction in the country’s exclusive economic zone — areas where India and Sri Lanka have stepped up joint coordination over the past year.
