Udupi: The Malpe Fishermen’s Association has given an ultimatum of three days to the State government to trace the fishing boat with seven fishermen on board, which went missing on December 13, 2018.
Sathish Kunder, President of Malpe Fishermen’s Association has said that chief minister H D Kumaraswamy should speak to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and get the central intelligence agencies to track the missing boat.
The boat-“Suvarna Tribhuja” left the Malpe fisheries harbour along with 20 other boats as usual in the deep seas on December 13. The last communication from the missing boat was at 1 am on December 15, when it was in touch with another fishing boat. Since then, there has been no contact with the boat.
He said that at one point, one of the fishermen’s mobile was located at Malvan in Maharashtra, however, this was almost close to the location where the last commucation came in. “When all the efforts to contact the boat failed, the fishermen in other boats passed on a message,” he said adding that it is now feared that the boat may have been hijacked by terrorists because in case the boat had met with a mishap, at least debris would have been found. The families of the seven fishermen Damodar, Laxman, Harish, Sathish, Ravi, Ramesh and owner of the trawler Chandrashekar Kotian are anxious.
This is the first incident in Karnataka in the history of fishing, which has caused a sense of panic among the fishermen.
