A 57-year-old citizen of the Philippines has been evacuated by the Indian Coast Guard from a merchant vessel at the Arabian sea off the Gujarat coast and hospitalised after he fell unconscious on suffering severe head injuries, the ICG said.

The patient was first shifted to a government hospital in Porbandar city and later taken to another state-run medical facility in Rajkot for further treatment, it said. The medical evacuation was undertaken on Monday from the Liberian-flagged merchant vessel (MV) Irenes Ray, which was on passage from Sri Lanka to Pakistan, the ICG said in a release on Tuesday.