In two separate incidents, five fishermen from Arcottuthurai coastal village in Nagapattinam district were attacked by unidentified persons, mid-sea, while they were fishing several nautical miles southeast of the Kodiyakkarai coast and robbed of their belongings around midnight on Friday, February 2, 2024.
Fishermen from Nagappatinam district have faced a series of such mid-sea attacks in recent months. At least eight such incidents were reported between August and December last year. This is the first such incident in 2024, the police said.
According to police sources, T. Ponnuthurai, 51, and S. Jeyachandran, 40, both hailing from Fishermen Colony in Arcottuthurai near Vedaranyam, had ventured into the sea in a fiberglass boat from their village, on Friday afternoon.
G. Raman, 51, R. Ramesh, 28, and J. Sivakumar, 40, from the same village, had also ventured into the sea for fishing, in another fiberglass boat. When both groups of fishermen were fishing separately about 20 nautical miles southeast of the Kodiyakkarai coast at around midnight, four persons, suspected to be Sri Lankans, approached them, also on a fiberglass boat, and intercepted their boats.
Three of them reportedly boarded the boats of the Nagapattinam fishermen and assaulted them. They took away Global Positioning System (GPS) gadgets, a mobile phone, and a smartwatch from them. Both groups of fishermen managed to reach the Arcottuthurai coast on Saturday (February 3) morning.
The Vedaranyam Marine Police of the Coastal Security Group have begun an investigation.
