Fisherman recalled the trauma in prison since arrest at sea in 2011
Emerson, wife Lavanya and son Vals break down at their reunion in Thangatchimadam on Friday. - DC
Rameswaram: Almost the entire population in Thangatchimadam fishing village turned up with flowers and broke into music and dance to give the heroes’ welcome when the five fishermen returned home around noon on Friday after being freed from the gallows by a presidential pardon in Sri Lanka. It was a long haul as the Indian foreign ministry flew them from Colombo to Delhi on Thursday for ‘debriefing’ in the MEA and flew them to Chennai late night for the grueling road journey to their village.
Looking happy and relaxed despite the three-year ordeal in the Lankan jails after being caught at sea on a drug trafficking charge, the five fishermen P. Augustus, R. Wilson, Emerson, J. Langlet and K. Prasath — hugged their relatives and friends expressing joy at being back home, at being alive. They broke down at times, recalling the trauma in prison since arrest at sea in 2011, particularly after the Colombo high court pronounced death penalty on October 30.
“Sri Lankan navy and police beat us up badly to extract confession that we smuggled brown sugar. We were out fishing as usual that evening (November 28, 2011) when our boat engine failed and we started to drift. We approached a boat that had dropped anchor and appeared to be waiting for something. We wanted to ask for help but suddenly a naval boat appeared from nowhere and we were arrested. They said we had taken the brown sugar to be delivered to that stationary boat. They would not listen to our denials,” Augustus told reporters amid all that celebration, while Prasath standing nearby shook his head in approval.
A short distance away, Emerson was weeping with joy hugging his wife Lavanya and son Vals. The little fellow was terrified and started wailing when Lavanya first handed him to her husband to be kissed. It was the first time that the father and son were meeting as Lavanya was four months pregnant when the arrest happened.
“It was hell in the Sri Lankan jail,” said Langlet. “And when the court pronounced the death sentence, I could not understand it in the beginning as the order was in Sinhalese. When I came to know, I broke down and cried in the court hall. I told them to just shoot me and let me die in peace.” There was high drama of another kind, rather low in taste, as political parties vied with each other to claim credit for getting the Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa to grant pardon to these five condemned prisoners.
AIADMK was at the village at full strength fisheries minister Jayapal, sports minister Sundararajan, Ramnad MP Anwar Raja and several senior state officials. And when they spoke hailing party chief Jayalalithaa as being responsible for the fishermen’s freedom, BJP functionary Suba Nagarajan along with party members raised slogans in praise of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government at the Centre.
The BJP members staged a walkout, so did the DMDK group and also the Vasan Congress. They all trooped back after the AIADMK team departed.
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