Workers at Grove beach in Kovalam painstakingly collect the plastic nurdles that polluted the coast of Kerala following the sinking of the container vessel MSC ELSA-3 last year, in Thiruvananthapuram on June 7, 2026
| Photo Credit: Nirmal Harindran
The Kerala High Court has directed the Ministry of Defence to file a report regarding the condition of the containers with hazardous cargo from MSC Elsa 3, a Liberia-flagged vessel that sank off the coast of Alappuzha in May 2025, and whether they remain properly tethered and secured.
The Division Bench of Justices V. Raja Vijayaraghavan and K.V. Jayakumar noted that the National Institute of Oceanography planned to undertake an environmental damage assessment and a long-term scientific study to determine the extent of damage caused by the shipwreck. However, it held that the assessment would not substitute for an independent technical verification of the survey reports.
Assessing the survey reports, the court noted that approximately 84 containers were partially embedded in the seabed, and several had structural damage. The court expressed apprehension that it is not known whether the doors remained tethered.
The court reiterated the need for an independent scrutiny of the reports by the Mediterranean Shipping Company, the owners of the ship, by a competent expert body to assess whether the wreck posed a hazard according to its environmental impact.
The Amicus Curiae informed the court that the Indian Navy possesses the required expertise in deep-sea diving operations, remotely operated vehicle-based underwater interventions, and complex salvage operations, and has repeatedly undertaken challenging salvage and marine pollution response operations. Moreover, the Navy has commissioned INS Nistar, the first indigenously designed and constructed diving support vessel specifically built for complex deep-sea saturation diving, rescue, and salvage operations.
Published – July 15, 2026 10:07 am IST
