Pakistan on Wednesday detained 30 Indian fishermen and seized five fishing boats off Gujarat coast, reported The Hindu. The captured Indians are in Karachi jail and their boats have been kept at a fishing harbor in the Pakistani city. They will be produced before a judicial magistrate on Thursday, reported The Times of India.
The fishermen were detained near the International Maritime Boundary Line. They are believed to be from Porbandar in Gujarat. “We have learnt that five boats have been seized with 30 fishermen on board,” Manish Lodhari, secretary of the National Fishworkers’ Forum, told The Hindu. This is the second such incident in the past one week.
On April 11, Pakistan released seven boats and around 60 fishermen they had captured a day before. The Narendra Modi government told the Rajya Sabha in February that at least 147 Indian fishermen are lodged in Pakistani jails. Between December 2016 and January, Pakistan released a total of 447 Indian fishermen as part of a “goodwill gesture”. Many of the fishermen had been in jail for over a year. A total of 1,566 fishermen had been released from Pakistani jails in the past two years.
Relations between Indian and Pakistan have been tense since two Indian soldier were killed in exchange of fire Kashmir’s Krishna Ghati sector in Poonch near the Line of Control. Their bodies were also mutilated by the Pakistani Army. However, Islamabad has denied the allegations.
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