A vacation bench of Justices S. Vaidyanathan and Abdul Quddhose on Thursday transferred the habeas corpus petition filed seeking the production of fishermen who went missing following Cyclone Ockhi to the principal seat in Chennai.
The Madurai bench of the Madras High Court had earlier sought a detailed status report from both the Central and the State government on the extent to which the search operations were being carried out.
The State had earlier submitted that a total of 271 fishermen were missing, and search operations were on to rescue them. The Centre told the court that Coast Guard ships and helicopters were deployed to carry out the search operations.
Submitting that his relatives and friends were among those missing, the petitioner, A.M. Anto Lenin of Kanniyakumari, claimed that the whereabouts of a large number of fishermen from 42 villages in the district, who went for deep-sea fishing beyond 200 nautical miles were still not known.
Mr. Anto Lenin added that he had joined a team led by C. J. Rajan, president of Samam Kudimakkal Iyyakkam, to ascertain the number of missing fishermen.
The team had visited the families in the fishing villages of Kanniyakumari and ascertained that a total of 551 fishermen were missing.
He contended that the rescue operations were not being carried out beyond 60 nautical miles and pleaded for intensifying the efforts.
