Bodies of the four Tamil Nadu fishermen, who died after their boat was sunk allegedly by Sri Lankan Navy on Monday, were handed over to the Indian Coast Guard near the international maritime boundary line on Saturday morning. A group of fishermen received the body from the authorities. Late in the evening, the four — A Mesiya (30) of Thangachimadam, V Nagaraj (52) of Vattanvalasai, S Senthil Kumar (32) of Thaathanenthal and N Samson Darwin (28) of the Sri Lankan refugee camp at Mandapam, — were laid to rest in their villages in Ramanathapuram district.
Though postmortem of the bodies was done in Sri Lanka, fishermen had demanded a second post-mortem when they met Union fisheries minister Giriraj Singh on Friday night. Following this, Ramanathapuram district administration had arranged for the same by a team of doctors at the district government hospital. However, on Saturday the families urged the officials to hand over the bodies without the re-postmortem. “We got an undertaking from the four families individually and handed over the bodies to them,” a police officer told TOI. The bodies were brought to the fish landing centre at Kottaipattinam around 3 pm. Health minister C Vijayabaskar along with relatives of the deceased received them and paid homage. Pudukottai district collector P Uma Maheswari and officials were also present. Ramanathapuram collector Dinesh Ponraj Oliver paid homage when they were brought to the district in the evening. At Thangachimadam, fishermen staged a road blockade on the Madurai – Rameswaram highway for nearly 90 minutes till 6.30 pm demanding initiation of criminal action against the Lankan Navy.
Fisheries minister D Jayakumar said Sri Lanka has constituted a committee to probe the incident. “It should be an unbiased committee. The Sri Lankan navy has committed a mistake. We will gain trust in the committee only when those who are guilty are punished,” he said. In the event of the committee not punishing the guilty, the minister said that it will be treated as an eyewash.
2021 Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd.