Somalia captives to be released soon,Vessel bartered in exchange

By SNV Sudhir

Visakhapatnam. July 21: S A Raju, skipper of the eight member crew who were held hostage at the outer sea, two miles away to the north of Mogadishu port of Somalia seemedto be in a buoyant mood when this correspondent contacted him. The reason they are ready to return to their hometown.Abdullah Ali Mohammed of Dubai who held the eight-member crew belonging to Vizag hostage has finally agreed to free them. One of the two vessels would be emptied and all the cargo shifted to the other vessel. The process is expected to take another week. The crew will be sent back in the emptied vessel to Cochin, which will take 12 to 15 days. This is all due to the initiative taken by the Pramod Ranjan of Chennai, pressurized by the repeated mention of his name in media reports.Pramod is in Dubai negotiating with Abdullah for the past two days. Speaking to this correspondent from Dubai, Pramod said that he is leaving one of his vessels with Abdullah in exchange for the crew. He said that they have both come to an agreement by which the crew will be paid all arrears till now. He said that he was having some profit sharing disputes with Abdullah during the last year’s fishing operations, “Abdullah requested me to leave my vessels and crew as he wanted to continue the fishing. I left the decision to the crew whether to continue with Abdullah or not. But the crew agreed to continue because they had confidence in me. That’s why I came to Dubai though I am having differences with Abdullah,” Pramod said.Raju said that they were employed to catch the special shrimp Lobster that is available in plenty in the Somalia seas. Unfortunately the crew could catch only 10-15 tonnes during their first two and half months of fishing operations and could not proceed further as there weren’t many lobster shrimps available there.Abdullah held the crew forcibly without providing the basic minimum facilities and was forcing them to go for shrimp catch in the next season as he had incurred losses in the first catch. “Abdullah did not allowed me to come to India when my mother passed away in January, he made us work like dogs and slaves here. Now I’m happy that I will be back home,” Raju said joyously.