Nine fishermen, who had been severely burned after their boat caught fire and sank at sea on 5th April, were saved by the Indian Coast Guard Ship (ICGS) Veera while on patrol off the Andhra coast in the Bay of Bengal. The ship received a radio message from a nearby fishing boat about the fire onboard the Indian fishing boat (IFB) Durga Bhavani around 65 nautical miles from Visakhapatnam harbour, according to the Indian Coast Guard.
The IFB Durga Bhavani, an Andhra registered boat, had nine crew members and sailed from Kakinada harbour on 26th March. The boat caught fire and resulted in an explosion of a gas cylinder onboard on Friday. All nine fishermen had to jump into the water to escape, and some suffered severe burn injuries in the process. Due to the explosion, the fishing boat was damaged and sank within a few minutes. Fortunately, a nearby boat picked up the survivors and relayed the information about the fire and explosion to a Coast Guard ship, the Defence Ministry statement stated.
ICGS Veera quickly responded to the emergency situation and arrived at the location in just a few hours to provide aid to the survivors. The ship’s medical team immediately provided first aid to all nine survivors, who were then shifted to the ICG ship. Coast Guard District Headquarters No. 6, in coordination with JD Fisheries Visakhapatnam, arranged for ambulances and medical teams to evacuate the critically injured crew of IFB. The injured fishermen were then taken to King George Hospital, Visakhapatnam, for further treatment.
“Due to the swift response of the ICG ship, the entire rescue operation was completed within a short span of six hours,” said the Coast Guard. It’s worth noting that the Indian Coast Guard is the lead agency that provides assistance to fishermen at sea and is also the national coordinating agency for Search and Rescue at Sea.
Coast Guard seizes gold off Mandapam coast in Tamil Nadu worth 3.43 crore
Seized foreign-origin gold
Meanwhile, in a separate operation, there was an incident where the Indian Coast Guard and Customs Preventive Unit (CPU), Ramanathapuram, DRI, joined together to seize 4.9 Kg of foreign-origin gold at mid-sea near Vedhalai coast, Mandapam, in Tamil Nadu. The officers of DRI had obtained specific intelligence that a gang was smuggling foreign-origin gold into India from Sri Lanka through the Vedhalai coast in Ramnathapuram District via a fishing boat. In the joint operation, the officers of DRI and ICG mounted surveillance over the movement of suspected fishing boats at the Vedhalai Coastal area near Mandapam on the night of April 3-4. Eventually, they identified a suspected boat at mid-sea, chased it in an ICG vessel, and intercepted it. However, just before the point of interception, the officers noticed that one of the persons onboard the suspected boat threw a consignment into the sea, the Defence Ministry statement revealed.
As per the Coast Guard, a country boat was carrying three individuals. Upon investigation, the trio confessed that the items disposed of in the sea were foreign-made gold smuggled from Sri Lanka. They received it from a boat from the same country while at deep sea. Meanwhile, officers from CPU Ramanathapuram joined in a boat, secured the location where the gold was thrown into the sea, and started a search operation. After an extensive search operation, the smuggled gold was retrieved from the sea bed on April 5th afternoon. Upon opening the package, crude gold bars of different sizes, weighing 4.9 Kg and valued at Rs 3.43 crore, were found tightly packed in a towel. The DRI officers seized the confiscated 4.9 Kg of smuggled gold of foreign origin, and all three individuals were arrested and interrogated.
Ravi Shankar
