 Online edition of India's National Newspaper Friday, Jul 10, 2009 ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version |
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Tamil Nadu
RAMANATHAPURAM: The two-day “Operation Barricade,” which was mainly coordinated by the Coast Guard and carried out along the mainland of the coast and on and off shores from Chennai to Kanyakumari by all State and Central government security agencies, exposed the importance of using fishermen as an alternative source of guarding the coast from intrusion of outsiders and terrorists. The toll-free search and rescue telephone (154) rang on the early morning of Tuesday. The receiver got an input that 6 gun-toting persons had landed at Lancheri off Thondi through two abducted fishing boats. Within no time, the inputs were exchanged to the departments of fisheries, police, forest, and intelligence agencies. All offshore and onshore patrolling vessels, including hovercraft of Coast Guard stations in Chennai, Mandapam and Tuticorin, were alerted. The Dorniers and Chetak helicopters were also pressed into service for aerial surveillance. The result was that the so called gunmen were arrested by a police party within a few hours of information. Though many stakeholders share credit for this since many of them played at least a small part in it, it has been lauded that the abducted fishermen played a major role in it. Though the gunmen threatened the two boat drivers and inmates of boats (TN-09-MFB-43 and TN-09-WV-2682), they immediately alerted Coast Guard, police and other agencies by narrating the entire incident. “The gunmen, who forcefully boarded the boat, threatened the driver to sail the boat to Olaikuda shore. But, they tactfully sailed the boat to Lancheri where there was no proper transport facility for them to intrude as per their plan. Within a few minutes we passed the information to security agencies for further action,” said A. Madhavan of Sozhiakudi, owner of one of the boats. Mock operationCommandant K. Janardhanan, Commanding Officer, Coast Guard station, Mandapam said that all Coast Guard personnel and members of other security agencies had risen to the occasion. It was a finest exercise. It had been proved that the fishermen, who didn’t know that it was a mock operation to test the preparedness of security men, gave first information about what happened in the sea. “They were eyes and ears of the coast, safeguarding against enemies.”
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