Pakistan has summoned India’s chargé d’affaires over an Indian naval vessel in its exclusive economic zone (Express Tribune).
What is alleged
That an Indian naval vessel entered Pakistan’s exclusive economic zone on 15 September, while the Sea Spark 26 naval exercises were under way.
The Foreign Office lodged a “strong protest” and called it a “serious violation of international law”.
What an EEZ is, and why the legal claim is not simple
An exclusive economic zone extends up to 200 nautical miles from the coast. Within it a state has sovereign rights over resources — fish, seabed, energy — but not sovereignty over the water itself.
Under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, other states retain freedom of navigation through an EEZ, including for warships. A foreign naval vessel transiting a Pakistani EEZ is not, on its own, unlawful.
What can make it unlawful is conduct: surveillance, interference with exercises, or activity inconsistent with the coastal state’s rights. Pakistan has not described what the vessel did.
So the protest may be well founded, and the reporting does not yet contain the facts that would establish it. We are reporting the protest, not endorsing the characterisation.
The timing is the substance
Sea Spark is Pakistan’s own naval exercise. A foreign warship close to it during live serials is an intelligence opportunity, and both navies understand that. Protests of this kind are usually about presence during an exercise rather than presence as such.
Where relations stand
Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari said this week that India “started a war based on a lie and lost miserably”, after the 2025 conflict that followed the Pahalgam attack and ended in a US-brokered ceasefire on 10 May. India suspended the Indus Waters Treaty during that confrontation and it has not been reported as restored.
What is not established
The vessel’s identity, position and conduct have not been published, nor the distance from the exercise area. India has not responded publicly, and no Pakistani naval account of the incident has been released.
[Image: The Express Tribune]
