Drawing a line in water

He was curled up in his mother’s womb when his father K Prasad set off with his four friends on their fishing boat, like he did every morning. But that day, on November 28, 2011, the Sri Lankan navy took him into custody from Lankan waters for allegedly smuggling heroin. Two weeks ago, a Sri Lankan court sentenced Prakash and four other fishermen on that boat to death.

“I was all alone until I shifted to my parents’ house recently,” says Prakash’s wife Skenitta, 27. “Somewhere in my mind, I still believe he will come back.” After Prakash’s arrest, she learnt a bit of nursing and now works as a nursing assistant at a hospital in Pamban. Her mother sells dosas on the Pamban coast. “My salary of Rs 2,000 and the little money my mother earns keep us going,” she says.

The last time her son Roshan saw his father was on the day he turned one; the boy is now four.

Indian fishermen setting out into the waters face risk of ending up on the other side every day. (Source: Express photo by Arun Janardhanan)

Skenitta says they may be poor — Prasad earned between Rs 300 and 800 a day, depending on the catch — but refuses to believe he could have been involved in smuggling drugs. “He was never that adventurous. He never tried his luck with even a lottery ticket. I can believe his boat crossed the boundary line, but not this crime,” she says.

According to the chargesheet submitted before the Sri Lankan court, P Emerson, 40, P Agustus, 32, R Wilson, 42, K Prasad, 30, and J Langlet, 22, were “engaged in smuggling heroin” when the Lankan navy intercepted their boat around 9 pm near northern Jaffna. The case document, which The Sunday Express has accessed, says that a patrolling team of 17 cadets and three commanders of the Lankan navy intercepted two boats on November 28, one with a Sri Lankan registration and the other, an Indian boat with five fishermen on board. The occupants of the two boats were allegedly spotted exchanging objects in mid-sea.

The chargesheet also said the navy personnel seized three packets of heroin from the Lankan boat and another packet from the waters. Though the chargesheet doesn’t mention seizures from the Indian boat or fishermen, the five Indians were taken into custody and it was established, based on circumstantial evidence, that they had given the packets of narcotics to the Sri Lankans. Severe charges have been pressed against the five.

Investigators said the Indian fishermen were acting as couriers, a theory that has been established before the court given the nature of this sea route — a stretch that measures 30 km between India and Sri Lanka which once played a major role in sustaining the civil war in the island nation, ensuring supplies of food and petrol to LTTE operatives from their sympathisers in Tamil Nadu. After the war ended in 2009, the sea route became a preferred route for smugglers to ship counterfeit currency, gold and heroin, forcing Lanka to step up its watch.

Every morning, the coast on the island of Pamban or Rameswaram wakes up to the din of boats being pushed out into the sea, fishermen hollering at each other, their nets all rolled up until they are unfurled in mid-sea. Most boats set out to sail at 6 am only to return the next morning. There are more than 1,500 fishing trawlers competing for space — and catch — around Pamban and Mandapam, another coast 11 km from the mainland. Each boat sets off with five to seven fishermen and three fishing nets. The deeper they go, the higher their chances of coming back with nets brimming with fish. But they know each journey is fraught with risks.

“Going into the sea has become dangerous ever since the war ended in Sri Lanka. Those days, there was hardly any fishing from the Sri Lankan side and no Lankan navy either. Now, it’s different. If they decide to arrest us, there is very little we can do. We can’t even inform other Indian boats in the vicinity as very few boats are equipped with GPS or any communication equipment. The VHF (Very High Frequency) radios on board the boats don’t always work,” says Raja Pandian, 55, a fisherman who was arrested thrice by the Lankan navy in the last three years. But that hasn’t deterred him from setting sail every morning.

Pamban island on the Indian side and Thalaimannar on the Sri Lankan side are like two outstretched hands that never meet. Between them runs the International Maritime Boundary Line (IMBL), the theatre of most maritime disputes between the two countries and a mere 11 km from the Rameswaram coast.

Jersan, 40, a fisherman from Thangachimadam village on Pamban, says they have no option but to cross the boundary line. “If we strictly adhere to the international line, our fishing area will be limited to less than 4 km from the coast. The rest of the sea is out of bounds for us because of the rocks,” he says.

Ever since news of the sentencing reached them, the families of those convicted have been running around to be heard. A monthly allowance of Rs 7,500, announced by the Jayalalithaa government in 2012, supports them. Two weeks ago, Emerson’s wife Lavanya had approached the Madurai bench of the Madras High Court seeking the court’s intervention to appoint a counsel for the fishermen. The state government has now announced Rs 20 lakh to file an appeal in the Lankan Supreme Court.

With pressure mounting on the Centre to intervene on behalf of the fishermen, on November 4, the High Commissioner to Sri Lanka visited the five fishermen in jail and assured them help. In Ramanathapuram and Rameswaram, people have taken out protest marches, even damaged rail tracks and burnt down buses. Vaiko, whose MDMK is an ally of the BJP, lashed out at the Centre “for giving too much freedom to Sri Lanka”.

Maritime experts say the case of the fishermen was a tragedy waiting to happen. They point to the overpopulation of fishing trawlers along the Rameswaram coast and the overexploitation of resources that eventually forces Indian fishermen to cross the IMBL. While Indian fishermen use trawlers that wipe clean the sea bed, disturbing the marine ecosystem, Lanka has banned these high-powered trawlers and their fishermen mostly use catamarans and other small boats. Besides, there has been a steep increase in the number of fishing trawlers on the Indian side — from 300 in the early 1980s to over 1,500 at present.

Commodore R S Vasan, maritime safety expert and former eastern regional commander of the Indian Coast Guard, says, “What leads Indian fishermen into such situations is primarily the lack of policies and regulations. The unfair fishing practices of Indian trawlers cannot be ignored. Besides ignoring the crisis of Indian fishermen, we are ruining the livelihood of poor Sri Lankan fishermen.”
Indians in Lankan jails

# 28 Indians in all are imprisoned in Lanka. Other than the five who were recently sentenced to death, the others are undertrials, mostly facing charges of smuggling drugs.
# 24 Indian fishermen are in custody for crossing the borders.
# 82 Indian fishing trawlers are in Lankan custody.
# 30 Indian fishermen were released two months ago.