Rameswaram: Fishermen of Rameswaram and elsewhere in Tamil Nadu launched a major protest against the killing of their kin, Brijo, allegedly in firing by the Sri Lankan Navy Monday night, declaring they would not accept his body from the general hospital morgue here until the foreign ministry in Delhi promised “firm action against enemy Ilangai (Sri Lanka) and the absolute safety for our fishermen and boats in our traditional fishing grounds”.
Twenty-year-old Brijo sustained bullet hit in the neck and died on the way bleeding profusely even as his four mates on the boat rushed him from the firing area to Rameswaram. Another fisherman in the boat, Saravanan, sustained splinter injuries in the abdomen and has been admitted in the Rameswaram GH, where doctors said he was out of danger.
A large crowd of grieving relatives and locals had gathered at the Rameswaram fishing port when the mechanised boat, along with another similar vessel, reached the shore about 30 minutes after midnight. “Those murderers have killed my baby. They have shot dead a little boy”, screamed the sobbing father Kamleez. There was loud wailing all around in the dark as the police pushed their way into the crowd and got the body shifted in an ambulance to the hospital.
