Sheekha Bureau
Port Blair, July 12: The security agencies have launched a massive manhunt for 17 Myanmarese poachers, who had attacked 13 fishermen of Little Andaman area on Tuesday night and escaped with one engine dinghy with 12 liters of diesel. But till now there is no trace of any of these intruders and Coast Guard has also failed to locate the engine dinghy despite maintaining surveillance in the region.
Sources however, strongly believe that these poachers might have left the Pather Tikry area of Little Andaman but are still somewhere around Little Andaman Islands. With 12 liters of diesel they can easily reach to Brother Sister Islands, which are close to Little Andaman and if this factor is considered that these poachers already had some reserve fuel with them, hidden somewhere in forest, then they can easily reach upto Rutland Island of South Andaman within five hours.
Although some PRI members of Little Andaman are now making an issue out of this situation and had organized Dharna last night to gain political mileage, fact remains that Police Department had already arrested 8 poachers from the region braving adverse weather and combing hostile forest area for several weeks. The Police Department of Little Andaman had already alerted all Panchayats and Fishermen units of Little Andaman about possibilities of presence of Poachers in the area, who can even attack them.
Despite of these warnings, why there 13 fishermen went for fishing deep inside the forest, that too, inside reserve forest illegally, is still not known.
Police is not ruling out the possibilities that these people had actually gone for illegal timber extraction and even interacted with the poachers inside forest. But when the poachers demanded the engine dinghy there was a fight and finally Indian Fishermen were overpowered. This angle is still to be cross verified by police although the initial investigating team which inspected the spot got some hints already.
Meanwhile, some groups also suspect that there are many people in Andaman Island who might have links with these poachers and supply them fuel and food, because of which these poachers are able to survive easily in deep jungle. Of course this is again another theory of investigation agencies.
Meanwhile, the Coast Guard, which has become target of serious criticism in social media, is still searching for these poachers along with police department and public hope that Coast Guard will atleast detect and apprehend them, this time, when these poachers make the final attempt to escape to Myanmar.
