D J Venkatesh
Port Blair, Sept 07: The Indian Coast Guard have intercepted a foreign boat off Diglipur Islands, North Andaman region and arrested one Myanmarese and four Thai crew members. The coast guard team also found arms and ammunitions onboard the foreign boat.
The boat and all the foreign intruders, possibly Pirates, have been handed over to Police Department this morning by Coast Guard at Diglipur Island.
According to reports the fast boat, which was going towards Myanmar from Thailand was first spotted by a Coast Guard Dornier yesterday morning, during its routine sortie over North Andaman Islands.
“The fast moving suspicious boat was first spotted nearly 45 nautical miles off Diglipur Island. The boat was not having any flag of any countries and initially no one was seen onboard the vessel,” Inspector General VSR Murthy, the Commander of Andaman and Nicobar Coast Guard Region told Andaman Sheekha today.
Murthy added that following this sighting another sortie of Coast Guard Dornier was sent to keep an eye on them. Meanwhile the Coast Guard diverted Indian Coast Guard Ship, ICGS Akka Devi, patrolling in the region to intercept the boat.
“The foreign boat was intercepted yesterday evening. The boarding party found two Revolver one Assault Sub-Automatic Rifles and 229 live rounds from their fast boat,” Murthy added.
Initial investigation says that these people were going towards Myanmar in search of boat people (Rohingyas) and loot them but a detail interrogation is yet to be done.
Meanwhile, unconfirmed reports by highly placed sources say that the boat also had a Satellite Phone and some documents written in Urdu (Arabic). One of the foreign intruders reportedly speaks Hindi.
A few months back the Intelligence Bureau had sounded an alert for Andaman about possible coastal intrusion threat from LeT, following which all security forces have been kept in high alert.
