Two Indian fishermen from Puducherry injured in Sri Lankan Navy firing

Chennai: Two Indian fishermen from Karaikal in Puducherry were injured while resisting arrest by Sri Lankan Navy personnel who shot at them while chasing a group of 13 fishermen in two boats for entering the waters of the island nation.

The incident took place late Monday night when the fishermen from Karaikal and Nagapattinam and Mayiladuthurai district in Tamil Nadu were fishing near Neduntheevu(Deft Island) in northern Sri Lanka.

The shocking incident comes just three days after 34 fishermen from Rameswaram in Tamil Nadu were taken into custody by the Sri Lankan Navy for allegedly crossing the International Maritime Boundary Line (IMBL) and entering into its territory.

Sources in the fishermen community told DH that the Sri Lankan Navy personnel stopped the two boats and asked them to surrender. However, the fishermen, to save their lives and vessels, tried to flee from the scene which prompted the Sri Lankan Navy to fire at the boats, resulting in the injury of two persons, who are currently receiving treatment at Teaching Hospital in Jaffna, the capital of the Northern Province.

“Fishermen are forced to escape as their arrest would also mean impounding of the boat in which they sailed. Since the Sri Lankan government doesn’t release the boats, fishermen try not to get caught by the Navy. Seizure of their boats would take away their livelihood in a second and they resist arrest,” a source added.

Puducherry Fisheries Minister K Lakshminarayanan said 13 fishermen – six from Karaikal and the remaining seven from Tamil Nadu – went into the sea on January 23 and had permission to fish till January 28.

“We have received information from the fishermen about their arrest and the attack on them. We will urge the Union Government to take steps to stop such attacks,” Lakshminarayanan added.

The arrest of Indian fishermen from Pudukkottai, Nagapattinam, Thanjavur, and Ramanathapuram districts in Tamil Nadu and Karaikal in Puducherry by the Sri Lankan Navy has been a recurring affair in the Palk Strait for the past few decades. The boats seized by the Sri Lankan Navy are nationalised, snatching livelihood from Indian fishermen.

The fishermen cross the International Maritime Boundary Line (IMBL) and step into Sri Lankan waters as the fish catch is abundant on the other side, often landing in trouble as the island’s Navy personnel encircle them in mid-seas, especially when they cross Katchatheevu, an uninhabited island ceded by New Delhi to Colombo in 1974.

The fishermen’s Tamil counterparts in Sri Lanka’s northern region say the bottom trawlers used by Indian fishermen scrap the seabed, bringing ecological destruction.

In 2024, 530 fishermen from Tamil Nadu were arrested and 71 Indian boats were confiscated by the Sri Lankan Navy.