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.

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