MADRAS (PTI): Five fishermen of the southern state of Tamil Nadu enabled the police to apprehend a highly armed LTTE militant and recover a rocket launcher with six rockets, a medium machine gun and a light machine gun with 200 rounds of ammunition in a high drama off point Claimer coast on Feb.20.
Five militants of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a Sri Lankan separatist group travelling in a high speed fiber glass boat from Velvettithurai in Jaffna Peninsula, were stranded about 20 kms away from point Claimer coast as their boat’s engines developed trouble.
They signaled a passing Indian fishing boat with five fishermen to stop and later asked them to take them back to Velvettithurai. When the fishermen, all hailing from a village near Nagapattinam, refused, the militants trained their guns against them and took over the boat.
They later began shifting their entire payload including the arms into the fishermen’s boat.
While one LTTE man boarded the fishermen’s boat and the four Others were sitting in the fiber glass boat engaged in tying their boat to the other, the fishermen who had seen the lone LTTE man in their boat weaponless immediately started their engines, overpowered the lone fellow and sped to the Nagapattinam coast and handed over the 17yearold youth, Kiran alias Kannan, to the navy personnel who handed him over.
Article extracted from this publication >> February 26, 1993
