Security agency’s suspicions that a “bomb boat” intercepted by the Indian Coast Guard had links with Pakistan heightened on Saturday as it was found that on-board crew members of the trawler were neither dressed like fishermen nor did they carry fishing nets.
However, Pakistan denied the charge.The “fishing vessel“ set sail from Keti Bunder near Karachi for some “illicit transaction in the Arabian Sea”, according to the Coast Guard.
“We saw four men in the boat; they did not look like fishermen; they wore T-shirts and shorts,”and this raised our suspicion,” Indian Coast Guard Commander (North-West Region) Kuldip Singh Sheoran told reporters in Gandhinagar.
Intelligence agencies are believed to have intercepts of conversation between the on-board crew of the Pakistani trawler and their handlers in that country and elsewhere, which set off alarm bells about the real intention of the sailors on the night of December 31.
Sheoran evaded a query on whether the crew were terrorists. He said, “Multiple Indian intelligence agencies are jointly investigating the incident and they will go to the bottom of it.”
A search operation was on to fish out the suspect boatmen, who were intercepted about 365 km off the coast of Porbandar in the Arabian Sea.
The Defence Ministry had said that along with the boat, the four crew members had also sunk following a blast.
