Paramilitary forces may man merchant ships
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The central government would consider deploying para military forces on board merchant vessels, Union shipping secretary K. Mohandas has said.
The international maritime organisation (IMO) now allowed countries to have private armed forces on vessels and some like France and Belgium have deployed their own forces. The deployment of para-military forces would help in beefing up the security on board vessels, he said here on Saturday.
At present, most Indian vessels take the help of security agencies which rely on foreign nationals.
Mohandas was here in connection with the inauguration of the new building of the mercantile marine department.
He said that in the wake of the Italian ship firing incident, India would take up the issue of excluding the Exclusive Economic Zone from the war zone notification with the Maritime Safety Committee, prior to its meet in May.
The EEZ extends upto 200 nautical miles from the coast baseline.
“It is in the context of a spurt in pirate attacks that vessels tend to sail closer to the shore. If this proposal were to be accepted, merchant vessels could move in the outer waters,” he said, adding that this would help avoid incidens of the kind that happened in respect of the Italian ship off the Kerala coast recently.
On the probe by the mercantile department, along with the police, into the technical details of the Italian ship’s log book, the GPS and the ship’s port calls, he said a clear picture would emerge in a fortnight, by when the report would be readied.
A senior police official said the claim of the Italian crew that the Indian fishing vessel was 33 nautical miles from the shore was baseless. This was from Neendakara from where it started, but according to international maritime law, the nearest shore was Thottappilli, that was only 22.5nm away.
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