No death certificates 10 years after Malta boat tragedy

Chandigarh, Oct 18: The Punjab government has not yet issued death certificates of the victims of the Malta Boat Tragedy, that exposed the international human trafficking in Europe a decade back.

As many as 170 Indians, 88 Pakistanis and 149 Sri Lankans drowned in the Malta-Sicily channel on the offshore of Italy when their boat collided with a ship during a mid-sea transfer of these illegal migrants on the intervening night of December 24-25 in 1996.

Out of the total Indian victims, 141 were identified for which the Punjab and Haryana High Court had directed the Punjab government to issue the death certificates to the bereaved families. Amongst these, 139 were from Punjab and one each from Haryana and the Union Territory of Chandigarh.

Lamenting the delay in the legal and administrative procedures for the issuance of death certificates and the ex-gratia grant to the victims' families, Malta Boat Tragedy Probe Mission has now decided to file a Special Leave Petition (SLP) in the Supreme Court.

''The High Court had been totally silent on the grant of ex-gratia while giving orders for the issuance of death certificates,'' the Mission's president Balwant Singh Khera said at a press conference here today.

The CBI had chargesheeted 26 people, including two suspended officers of the Delhi Police and several travel agents, in the case which is presently being heard in a lower court in Delhi.

The next date of hearing in the case at the Tis Hazari courts is October 30.

''The court will listen to the arguments on October 30 and 31 now when we will plead that no ex-gratia has so far been given to the victims and the state of Punjab is not responding to the High Court directions for issuing death certificates at least,'' Mr Khera told reporters.

Mr Khera said a majority of the 24 travel agents accused in the case were from Punjab, while about five were operating from Delhi. ''These travel agents are still operating and Punjab government as well as the Centre are not taking any action,'' he said. These agents were presently on bail, he added. Meanwhile, 13 arrests have been made in Italy and Greece in connection with the case.

Mr Khera pointed out that the governments of these two nations had requested the Indian government to become a party to the cases being heard in their courts but the Centre was reluctant to do so.

Moreover, documents pertaining to the probe done by the Greece police, which had been sent to India, was just put on the shelves at the Ministry of External Affairs in Delhi, Mr Khera added.

''The job of translation of the Greek documents is still not done by our government,'' he said, adding scanning of those papers would further reveal the hidden areas of the chain of human trafficking.

Mr Khera said since this tragedy was a international marine tragedy and that too linked with the issue of human trafficking, it should be brought on the agenda at the United Nations as well.

He informed that the Malta Boat Tragedy Probe Mission delegates were now looking forward to visit Italy again as the governments of Italy and Greece had shown interests in fishing out the carcasses and remains of the victims and also the boat on which they were travelling.

''If Titanic can be brought out from the bed of the ocean after 90 years of its wreckage, then why can't this boat of the Malta tragedy be fished out from a sea after 10 years,'' he said.

UNI