Bangladesh Refugees abandoned by thai navy

The Coast Guard rescued 99 survivors adrift at sea for 13 days off the Little Andamans after a Bangladeshi swam ashore from the
distressed boat and informed the authorities, a senior Coast Guard official said on Sunday.

The Coast Guard swung into action after the Andaman police informed them that the Bangladeshi, who swam ashore at Hut Bay from a non-mechanised boat on December 26 told them that over 400 others were on board, Inspector General of Coast Guards Commander S P Sharma said here.

Coast Guard ships Varad and Bhikaji Cama were diverted to search for the survivors and next day a Dornier aircraft spotted the boat with 100 people on board waving for help, he said.

A helicopter from the Varad found the survivors in a highly deteriorated state of health.

Six of the distressed were winched up by the helicopter and brought on board the Varad.

He said that preliminary investigations revealed that 412 Bangladeshi and Myanmarese nationals had left for Malaysia 45 days ago.

According to the survivors the boats were intercepted by the Thai Navy after which they were detained for four weeks.

Sharma said, subsequently they were transferred to a non-mechanised boat with some bags of rice and released on the high seas off the Thailand coast to remain adrift for 12 days.

On the night of December 24, after spotting lights on the Andamans 300 of them reportedly jumped into the waters hoping to swim to shore and were feared dead or missing.

The Coast Guard has alerted vessels in the vicinity to be on the lookout for survivors, he said.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• Bangladesh
• refugee
• Thai
• India
• Navy
• coastguard

[mitchellasada]

I know what Bangladeshis are going to say, They gonna say RAW plotted against the men ,sent them to Thailand and sunk 300 in the middle of the ocean and tortured the rest..

[tmirdotorg]

lets talk about reunification of Bangladesh & India

[bengali2007babu]

people who are watching this video despite her freaking accent. i request you to cross examine the facts. you can google about this news. these illegal migrants are ruheenga people are from myanmer and ruheenga people who illegally live in chittagang bangladesh. they all are Burmese.

[blingwave]

gosh, and Americans are so bad in their treatment of illegal immigrants!