BHUJ: Pirates in the now famous Gulf of Aden region have an India connection. The Somali pirates use the same sea route, off the Horn of Africa, that sailors from Kutch and Surat have been using for centuries to trade with east African countries. In addition, they also use dhows and sailors from the Indian coastal region to carry out their nefarious tasks.
Highly places sources in the marine forces quoted a statement by Somali foreign minister Ali Abdi Avare, which said that the 13-member crew of an Indian dhow was rescued just last month by an armed group. The group — calling itself the freelance coastguard of the semiautonomous Puntland in the north of Somalia — battled the Somali captors
to free the Indian sailors, the statement adds.
It was later found that all the sailors were from Salaya near Jamnagar, sources said, adding that they were forced to hijack ships passing through the Red Sea on their way
to Asia.
In a previous incident, the American coastguard found eight Indian sailors held captive by the pirates, who would loot ships carrying wheat to the region’s poor countries, under the UN’s World Food Programme. Sources said that the Indian sailors denied being pirates when interrogated by the American coastguard. They added that the pirates had hijacked the dhow and forced the sailors to run the vessel to facilitate easy boarding of the intended victim ship. Sources also said Indian authorities verified the sailors’ claims of being innocent, and from Mandvi in Kutch. They were all allowed to return to Mandvi.
The sources said that while on-going anti-piracy operations protected big ships of international firms, which are anyway protected by ship insurance — which often covers pirate ransoms — small indigenous wooden vessels with small cargos of 500-1,000 tonnes from India to Africa had no such assurances. Mandvi in Kutch has a 400-year-old ship building yard on the bed of the Rukmavati river, which flow into the Arabian sea. More than 100 of the vessels built here are currently plying between Mumbai and the Gulf countries.
