Twenty four Indian fishermen were arrested by the Sri Lanka Coast Guard and Navy near Talaimannar on Monday night for allegedly entering their territorial waters and indulging in fishing illegally.
Four fishing boats have also been impounded.
With this, the number of arrested fishermen has gone up to 78 and that of impounded boats to 38.
On the eve of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s visit to India a month ago, 16 Indian fishermen were released by the Sri Lankan authorities.
Only on Friday last, Sri Lankan Parliament had a debate on the alleged poaching by Indian fishermen and members, cutting across political affiliations, expressed their dismay over the damage being caused by the use of trawlers.
A group of representatives of fishermen’s organisations from the Northern Province argued that after the end of the Eelam War in May 2009, the illegal entry of Indian trawlers created problems for the fishing community of the Province on a “big scale.”
In a statement, Noor Mohamed Alaam, Anthonipillai Emilaspillai and Joseph Francis, chairpersons of fishermen’s cooperative societies of Mannar, Jaffna and Killinochchi districts respectively, claimed that on an average, 1,000 to 1,500 Indian trawlers were engaged in illegal fishing for three days a week, and they had taken away marine resources to the tune of several hundreds of crores of rupees.
