We can also shoot, India tells Lanka

India has responded firmly to Sri Lanka Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s remark of shooting intruding Indian fishermen and said that was no solution as fisherfolk from both sides may stray into each other’s waters in pursuit of livelihood.

“If we resort to shooting, then both the countries can keep shooting each other, because it’s not just our fishermen who go there, their fishermen also come into our waters.

We need to have an interim solution based on humanitarian grounds and not technicalities,” External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj told the Rajya Sabha on Monday.

“I am happy to inform you that on both issues, Sri Lanka was agreeable with us,” she added.

She was referring to her discussions with Wickremesinghe, who recently stoked a controversy by seeking to defend rights of the island nation’s Navy and Coast Guard to shoot at Tamil Nadu fishermen straying across the maritime boundary between India and its neighbour in the Palk Strait.