India wants Sri Lanka to hand over 83 seized Indian fishing trawlers to their rightful owners.
"We recently wrote to Sri Lankan Foreign Ministry regarding this. We expect Colombo to release the vessels soon as possible," an authoritative Indian High Commission spokesperson told The Island yesterday.
This follows Lanka’s recent decision to make use of seized Indian fishing trawlers to transport passengers and goods. We revealed this in our front-page story "A fishy plan for Indian trawlers" on October 22.
According to the Fisheries and Aquatic Resources Ministry a total of 64 vessels were seized, over a period of time, from Indian fishermen, who were apprehended by the Navy while poaching in Sri Lankan territorial waters. A ministry spokesperson said ten of these vessels were recently handed over to the Government Agent of Jaffna and the navy base at Karainagar in the Karaitivu Island.
He said of the ten vessels, four would be used to transport passengers and goods between Kayts and the islands of Delft, Nainativu, Analativu and Eluvativu.
The ten vessels are estimated to be worth approximately Rs. 1.5 million. The navy routinely arrests poaching vessels, particularly off the Mannar coast, but there were no previous cases of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources releasing such vessels to be used by the navy or any other government agency.
But the Indian High Commission said that according to their reports, 83 Indian vessels were held by Sri Lankan authorities. (SF)
