The Madurai bench of the Madras high court on Friday asked the Union government to expedite steps to protect the Tamil Nadu fishermen from being attacked allegedly while they are fishing in the waters between India and Sri Lanka.
Even though the court had given a direction to the Union government on October 14 to take safety measures to protect the Indian fishermen, based on a public interest litigation(PIL), no action was taken. The PIL had sought deployment of sufficient number of Coast Guard vessels under the supervision of senior Indian navy officials to see that Indian fishermen, especially those from Tamil Nadu are not subjected to any atrocities allegedly by the Sri Lankan navy.
The bench had directed the Union government to implement its order within 10 days. However, on Friday, the petitioner’s counsel informed the bench comprising Justice K N Basha and Justice M Venugopal about an incident in which fishermen from Nagapattinam were attacked and robbed off their catch worth one 100,000 at knife-point on October 19.
The counsel further claimed that no action was taken despite a complaint being filed before the Coast Guard the same day.
The counsel then prayed before the court to take up a suo motu contempt proceeding against the defence secretary and the National Security Advisor to the Prime Minister.
However, the assistant advocate solicitor general of India, K K Senthilvelan submitted before the court that the Centre was taking steps to provide adequate protection to the Indian fishermen. The bench, however, asked the Union government to expedite all steps to protect the Tamil fishermen in the light of its earlier directions. (Times of India)
http://www.island.lk/index.php?page_cat=article-details&page=article-details&code_title=37534
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