Around 50 fishermen from Kerala and Tamil Nadu are stranded at Kalpeni in the Lakshadweep Islands where they, fleeing from Cyclone Maha, had sought refuge in the last week of October.
Seeking help from the government to return home, the men said they were running low on food and fuel. The authorities in Kalpeni were not being cooperative, they alleged.
“All of us are forced to remain in the boat. There is no other place to stay. We are low on food and the catch has begun to rot in the boats,” said Selvaraj, whose boat with 10 men entered Kalpeni on the morning of October 26, the last of five boats to do so.
Selavaraj’s boat was in mid-sea on October 24 when a wireless message warned them about the impending cyclone. They were asked to head to the nearest land. The deep depression in the Maldives-Lakshadweep region, which later intensified into Cyclone Maha, had the Lakshadweep Islands directly in its path.
But Kalpeni being nearest, Selvaraj and his companions decided to move to the island. “We approached Kalpeni by 8.30 p.m. on October 25, but were warned not to close in as rough seas and strong winds were reported near the shore. We spent the night in the boat and made for the land on October 26 morning,” he said.
Four other boats, all from Tamil Nadu, had reached the inhabited atoll on October 23. They have a mixed crew of fishermen from Kanyakumari district of Tamil Nadu and from the fishing villages of Pozhiyoor, Poovar and Mariyanadu in Thiruvananthapuram district. One of the boats was damaged by the waves as it neared Kalpeni.
Meanwhile, attention has been drawn to the fact that the boats had ventured out to sea ignoring alerts about the turbulent weather. The IMD had issued a formal cyclone alert over the Arabian Sea on October 24.
