Indian boatmen remanded till Friday

[TamilNet, Thursday, 03 July 2003, 15:44 GMT]
The Mannar Magistrate, Mr. N.M.M.Abdullah, remanded six Indian boatmen till Friday, when the boatmen, who were arrested by the Sri Lanka Navy on Wednesday for poaching in Sri Lankan waters, were produced in court Thursday, legal sources said.

The Sri Lanka Navy, based in Thalaimannar, Wednesday spotted about five hundred Indian fishing boats poaching in the Sri Lankan territorial waters. When the SLN crafts rushed to the spot to arrest the poachers, the fishing boats, except for the six captured by the SLN, fled to the Indian side, sources said.

The Sri Lanka Navy brought the six Indian boatmen with their boats to the Sri Lankan shore and handed them over to the Talaimannar Police, who produced them in court Thursday. The captured boats are in the custody of the SLN, legal sources said.

Police sources said earlier that another twenty fishermen arrested in the boats are in the custody of the Navy and will be handed over to the Indian Navy.

The six Indian boatmen now in remand are identified as Siluvai Anthonymuthu, Ponnusamy Sildan, Selvaraj Kumar, Subramaniam Murugan, Anandan Croos and James Robinson, all from Tamilnadu in India, sources said.

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