Mumbai Terror Aftermath – Part II

Anosh Malekar, Commodity Online
The year was 2003. Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had started a fresh peace initiative with Pakistan involving the release of prisoners by both nations as a confidence building measure. This, I recall from my days as a journalist working for a national magazine in Ahmedabad, had revived hope across Gujarat’s shores.

Click here to read Part I of the series : Fishermen in dock after terror attacks

“We don’t know the fate of our brethren, some of whom have been languishing in Pakistani jails for years,” Premjibhai Khokhari, the Porbandar-based secretary of the Gujarat forum of National Fishworkers’ Forum (NFF) had told me.

He had written to the prime minister’s office on May 5, 2003, seeking early release of Indian fishermen from Pakistani jails. Some 319 of them were in Pakistani jails as against 93 Pakistani fishermen in Indian custody. The issue was pending since 1987, when Pakistan first captured 11 fishing boats with their crew from Umbergaon, said Khokhari.

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Thomas Kocherry of NFF said his organization and the World Forum of Fisher Peoples have been writing to the leaders of India and Pakistan to settle the matter once and for all. NFF’s counterpart, the Pakistan Fisherfolks Federation, had been pursuing the matter with their leaders.

Both countries have exclusive economic zones (EEZs) approved by the United Nations, and fishing boats crossing the maritime lines are seized. Each maritime member country has exclusive rights up to 200 nautical miles (368 kilometers) of territorial seawaters in the Arabian ocean for the purpose of exploration, exploitation, conservation and protection of marine resources. The states and union territories on the west coast of India enjoy fishing rights up to 24 nautical miles (approximately 44 kilometers). The fishing area beyond that comes under the direct purview of the Centre.

The 1,600 kilometer long coastline of Gujarat accounts for 19.68 per cent of the coastline available to the country. Of Gujarat’s coastline, 900 kilometers is in close proximity to Pakistan and this is besides the 99 kilometers creek area in Kutch. The last decade or so has seen a rise in the number of fishermen captured in the Kutch Sea due to escalating border tensions between the rival nations.

In August 1999, Indian Air Force (IAF) MiGs had shot down a Pakistani Atlantique reconnaissance aircraft suspecting it of snooping over the marshy wastes of Kutch, while claiming it had tolerated eight such intrusions in the previous three months. On November 12, 2000, an Indian Mi-8 helicopter carrying Border Security Force (BSF) officials crashed mysteriously in the marshlands of Kutch, hardly 10 kilometers from where the Atlantique was shot down.

Gujarat had always been sensitive to the enemy across the Kutch border. In 1965 the state had lost a chief minister, Balwantrai Mehta, when his plane, flying on the Indian side of the Kutch border, was shot down by Pakistan. When the Keshubhai Patel government appointed Haren Pandya as its first minister of state for border security in 1998, it had intended to work out a foolproof plan to make the state’s terrestrial border and coastline safe.

Within a year of Pandya taking this additional responsibility besides being the junior minister for home, the Gujarat police in a joint operation with the BSF nabbed five Pakistani infiltrators and seized 24 kilograms of RDX, 63 small firearms of foreign make and explosive accessories from the Kori creek in Kutch. Pandya never tired of reminding the media that the RDX used in the 1993 Mumbai blasts was smuggled through the Gujarat coastline.A few nautical miles from the Gujarat coastline, inside the Kutch Sea another theatre of war was being enacted but nobody seemed to be bothered of its devastating implications for the state’s 25-lakh fisherfolk. Whenever traveling along the Kutch-Saurashtra coastline, which was devastated by the Kandla cyclone in 1998, one would often hear the locals say: ‘The wind is our enemy. When a strong wind blows over the Kutch Sea the fishermen at sea are in for big trouble, for the wind turns them over to the enemy’.

“We thought we were in safe waters, until the wind changed direction,” recalled 18-year-old Harish Mandan, one of four fishermen from the island of Diu who were spared by the Pakistani Marine Guards after they crossed into their territorial waters on April 22, 2003. Harish told me it was around 11 am and they had already spent six days at sea looking for the elusive catch, when the Pakistanis came in speedboats. “They abused us saying, ‘Why do you come here? We are tired of capturing you,’ and took away 21 fishermen. They released four of us – a 60-year-old and three minors”.

It was after this incident of Indian fishing boats being captured in the Kutch Sea that I had reached Diu, a former colony of the Portuguese, to meet the local fishermen.

Diu has only one overland entrance and exit. Sea surrounds it on three sides. Only to the north does water give way to a marshy creek that separates the island from the Saurashtra peninsula in Gujarat. The Union territory also encompasses a small part of the mainland, but the picturesque island itself is about 11 kilometer long and two kilometer wide. A narrow channel running through the swamp connects it with the mainland.

It is an isolated existence for the 44,000 residents heavily dependent upon fishing in the inland and coastal waters that are rich in hilsa, Bombay duck, shark, prawns and the popular pomfret. Only 20 per cent of Diu’s area is cultivable land growing wheat and bajra (pearl millet), which are suited to the dry climate.

Ramjibhai Solanki, village head of Vanakbara, a fishermen’s village on the island, said fishing activity is on a decline: “Our livelihood is dead. There is no fish left along the coastline. And if you venture out in the high seas, you risk being captured by the Pakistanis. Many of our men and boats have been taken away, leaving the families to starve”.

Click here for Part I of this series : Fishermen in dock after terror attacks
Watch out for this space tomorrow for Mumbai terror aftermath – Part III