(MENAFN- Khaleej Times) WITH THE fishing season set to begin from August 15 the Indian Coast Guard has warned the 3000000-odd fishermen in Gujarat against sneaking into the sea near the International Maritime Border (IMB) with Pakistan for a bigger and better catch.Inspector General of the Coast Guard in the North-West region Kuldip Singh Sheoran stunned gill-netters attending a workshop by saying that they deliberately switched off the GPS system to hide their actual location from the law-keepers us.
“In search of highly valuable Tuna fish you cross the IMB and enter Pakistani waters which eventually lands you in jails there. I urge you to stop this activity” said Commander Sheoran at an awareness workshop for fishermen organised at the Gujarat National Law University in the state capital of Gandhinaagr near Ahmedabad.
He said that the boats of the fisherfolk seized by the Pakistani authorities would be given to ISI for terrorist activities against India by Pakistan and while they stayed in jail the ISI would also try to lure them and convince them to turn against their own country.
“Thus you are putting national security at risk” said Sheoran who suggested the fishermen to be loyal to their country and not switch off GPS when they venture out into the sea next week and sent shivers down their spine by revealing that no fishermen would be allowed to catch fish in the sea off the Gujarat coast if they failed to produce their bio-metric ID cards.
Gujarat which boasts has India’s longest 1600-km coastline has 300000 seafaring fishermen living in some 900 coastal villages but only half of them have these smart cards which are tamper-proof and machine-readable. For more news from Khaleej Times follow us on Facebook at facebook.com/khaleejtimes and on Twitter at khaleejtimes Follow khaleejtimes ->
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