India's aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya catches fire; 1 officer dead

India's aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya caught fire in Karwar, Karnataka on Friday afternoon.

The Navy said officer Lt Cdr DS Chauhan was killed in the fire.

The Navy has ordered a Board of Inquiry to probe the incident. The fire was controlled by its crew preventing any serious damage to the warship’s combat capability.

Lt Cdr DS Chauhan was leading the firefighting efforts in the affected compartment.

The defence ministry informed that whilst the fire was brought under control, the officer suffered loss of consciousness owing to the smoke and fumes during the firefighting efforts. He was immediately evacuated to the Naval hospital at Karwar, INHS Patanjali for medical attention.

However, the officer could not be revived.

This is the third incident reported on INS Vikramaditya since it was inducted in the Indian Navy in 2014.

In 2016, during a scheduled refit, due to the leak of toxic gas from the sweage treatment plant, two people had died. Another incident took place in 2017 when a MiG 29 aircraft made an emergency landing due to a hydraulic failure.

The ship, a 1987 Soviet aircraft carrier whose original name was Baku, was later named Admiral Gorshkov and sold to India in 2004.