Sri Lankan Navy holds nine Rameswaram fishermen near Neduntheevu

The Sri Lankan Navy detained nine fishermen from Rameswaram and seized their boat on Saturday near Neduntheevu, saying the vessel had crossed the International Maritime Boundary Line.

Fewer than 400 boats had left Rameswaram fishing harbour that morning. Karalmarks, president of the fishermen's association, said the nine had taken the pass permits issued at the Rameswaram token office before they sailed. He condemned the arrests and asked, in remarks carried by ANI, what the central government and the Tamil Nadu government were doing. The detentions set off anger in the town by evening. Representatives want both governments to intervene.

Neduntheevu, also known as Delft, sits in the Palk Strait, in the same waters as the disputed islet of Katchatheevu. India ceded Katchatheevu to Sri Lanka under a 1974 agreement. Tamil Nadu governments have challenged the practical effect of that cession ever since, because the traditional fishing grounds of Rameswaram crews run up to and across the line. Bottom trawling by Indian mechanised boats is the practice Colombo cites when it makes these arrests. Fishermen on the Tamil Nadu coast say the line cuts through grounds they have used for generations, and that a token-office permit should mean they are at sea legally.

Saturday's boat is one vessel. The pattern is the story. Crews leave with a state permit, cross or are said to have crossed a boundary that is not marked on the water, and are taken to a Sri Lankan port. The boat is held. The men are charged or released after a diplomatic note. Families in Thangachimadam and the harbour wards wait on a phone call from the fisheries department. The association's complaint is that the call comes after the arrest, not before the boats sail into water both sides claim in practice.

The token office is the local fact that makes the anger specific. A fisherman who queues for a pass believes the Indian state has cleared the trip. The Navy on the other side of the line does not recognise that pass. The two permissions do not meet. Until Delhi and Colombo agree a fishing regime that both a token clerk and a patrol boat will honour, every sailing day can end as Saturday did.

Numbers from earlier seasons show why one boat still fills a town meeting. Hundreds of Indian fishermen have been held in Sri Lanka over the past decade, and dozens of trawlers remain in Sri Lankan custody from previous cases. Saturday adds nine men and one hull. It does not add a new legal theory. It adds another evening in which the association can say the permit was valid and the arrest still happened.

The central and state responses were not in the first reports from Rameswaram. The usual path is a note from the Indian high commission in Colombo and a request for early release. The open question for the crews is whether this group comes back with the boat or without it. In recent cases the men have returned faster than the trawlers. A seized mechanised boat is a year's income tied up in a foreign yard.