RAMESWARAM
The Central government should hold talks with Sri Lankan government and ensure release of 12 jailed fishermen from Rameswaram, said members of fishermen associations affiliated to various trade unions here on Monday.
Speaking to reporters, Jesu Raja, fishermen association leader said that on March 23, 12 fishermen ventured into the sea from Rameswaram. While they were engaged in fishing, the Sri Lankan Navy personnel arrested them charging that they poached into their water.
Earlier, in March, when four fishermen from Mandapam had ventured into the sea, the Sri Lankan Navy arrested them and jailed. However, the court in Sri Lanka had released them, but they were yet to reach homes here, he said and urged the State government to immediately take it up with the Centre in this regard.
From 2019, over 100 mechanised boats were impounded by the Sri Lankan Navy. Repeated pleas to get them rescued from the Sri Lankan authorities had not fetched any desired results so far. Under such circumstances, media reports from the island nation claimed that the government there had auctioned the boats. This has come as a shock to the fishermen as the boats were their livelihood and hence the Centre should immediately take up the cause of the fishermen with the Lankan authorities and stop such auctioning and retrieve them to the rightful owners here.
Some of the family members who also participated in the demonstration pleaded with folded hands to help them by safely securing their fishermen, who languished in the Sri Lankan jails.
At a time, when the Central and Tamil Nadu governments helped the Sri Lankan government by sending essential goods, which was a welcome gesture, such detention of the gullible fishermen was painful, a woman said, whose son-in-law was arrested since March 23.
After Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin informed the Legislative Assembly that the government would send essential goods including rice and medicines to Sri Lanka, the fishermen leader Jesu Raja, on behalf of the fishermen community offered to ferry the goods to Sri Lanka on their mechanised boats at the quickest time possible and be of help to the people in need of the commodities.
Published - May 09, 2022 06:05 pm IST
