Udupi, Dec 30: Two weeks since it went missing off Goa coast, the search for the missing fishing boat ‘Suvarna Tribhuja’ with seven fishermen on board from Malpe, continues without any concrete evidence about the fate of the vessel.
The boat had left for fishing from Udupi’s Malpe fishing harbour on December 13. The last communication from the boat was on December 15.
Raghupati Bhat, MLA, told presspersons here on Saturday that he had sent an email to Prime Minister Narendra over the missing fishing boat. Already Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had directed the Coast Guard and Indian Navy to search for the boat.
It was due to the request made to Ms Sitharaman that helicopters were not only searching in the sea but also the backwaters in neighbouring Maharashtra. Though the fishermen in Malpe had expressed strong suspicion that the boat might have been hijacked by terrorists, the officials of the Coast Guard had told him that this was unlikely.
In some earlier instances, boats were taken by force due to fights between fishermen of different States. But they got resolved quickly. Never before had a fishing boat from Malpe been missing for so long. The chance of the boat having been hit by another ship too was remote as no big ship had passed that way on December 15, Mr. Bhat said.
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