43 Indian fishermen held for entering Pakistani waters

The Pakistan Maritime Security Agency (PMSA) seized seven Indian fishing vessels on Thursday for entering Pakistan’s territorial waters and arrested 43 crew members, all of them Indian nationals.

With these latest arrests, the number of Indian fishermen held by the agency in operations over the past one month has risen to 144. According to PMSA Spokesman Commander Wajid Nawaz Chaudhry, aircrafts and speedboats were used in the operation, which was conducted near Pakistan’s maritime border in the Arabian Sea.

He said that 43 Indian fishermen had been taken into custody and were interrogated by PMSA officials before being handed over to the Docks police for further legal action. The arrested crew members would now be presented before a judicial magistrate with a request to obtain their physical remand.

Indian and Pakistani forces regularly detain each other’s fishing vessels and crews for their allegedly being involved in illegal fishing within the other side’s territorial waters. However, there has been a sharp increase in the number of operations and, consequently, arrests and vessel seizures with the start of the fishing season this year.

As per official records, Thursday’s operation was the fourth conducted by the PMSA in a short span of 34 days. The first operation was reported on November 10 in which the PMSA seized nine Indian fishing vessels and took into custody 55 crew members.

This was followed by an operation two days later, on November 12, in which four Indian fishing boats were impounded for entering Pakistani waters and 23 fishermen were held. In a third operation on November 16, the agency seized four Indian fishing vessels for entering Pakistan’s waters and arrested 23 crew members.

Briefing journalists before the start of Barracuda-VIII exercises on December 4, PMSA Director General Rear Admiral Jamil Akhtar had said it would be wrong to say that Indian fishermen mistakenly enter Pakistan’s sea limits. He added that if PMSA allowed Indians to fish in Pakistani waters, they can take away catch worth Rs20 billion annually.