56 Lankan refugees handed back to Tamil Nadu

MANGALORE: Fifty-six Sri Lankan Tamil refugees rescued from an aborted human trafficking bid were sent back to Tamil Nadu on Sunday. The repatriated refugees were among a group of 84 people, including 28 Indian nationals, who were attempting to leave India for Australia’s Christmas Island in a private boat from Tannirbhavi, near here. An overnight raid by police scuppered the trafficking bid.
IGP (Western Range) Pratap Reddy, also stand-in city police chief, told reporters here that a police team from Tamil Nadu’s Dharmapuri district led by police inspector Srinivasan helped in checking the antecedents of refugees and the Indian Tamil-speaking nationals.
Inputs from a police sub-inspector from the neighbouring state’s CID wing, who was in the town on some other official duty, came in handy, he said.
Of the 56 rescued refugees, 48 were registered and staying in 18 camps in Tamil Nadu, and the rest were unregistered.
Of the registered refugees, 42 are men, five women and one boy; all unregistered refugees are men. Among the 28 Indian Tamilians, 21 (7 men, 10 women, 1 boy and 3 girls) are from Tamil Nadu, four from Kerala and three from Karnataka.
All the 56 Lankan refugees will be handed over to the commissioner (rehabilitation) at Chennai on Monday. The 13 nabbed traffickers had taken Rs 30,000 to Rs 1 lakh from the refugees with a promise to ship them to Christmas Island. Of them 13, nine are refugees and four Indian Tamil-speaking citizens — three from Tamil Nadu and one from Kerala.
Police produced the accused before the jurisdictional magistrate and sought custody of five accused for interrogation. The findings from the investigation case will be shared with the Union, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu governments for action, the IGP said.