Italian marines sent to jail

The two Italian marine security personnel who shot dead two Indian fishermen off Aleppey coast in Kerala on February 15 have been moved to jail on Monday. They were sent to the Poojappura Central jail in the state capital of Trivandrum after Quilon Chief Judicial Magistrate A.K Gopakumar remanded them to judicial custody for 14 days. The two were produced before the court on expiry of their police custody. The court has directed the jail authorities to provide them special security and Italian food. Jail authorities said the two Italian marines Latore Massimiliano and Salvatore Gironi will be lodged at the hospital block in the jail. There will be an exclusive guard to provide them security. The special security has been provided in the light of presence of several members from the fishing community in the jail, who are outraged over the killing of the two fishermen from Quilon by the Italian naval officers. The Italians wanted the two marines to be lodged outside the jail during their trial. The court has permitted the Additional Director General of Prisons to take a decision on this in consultation with the state government. The government is not likely to allow this as it is already facing criticism from the Left Democratic Front opposition for giving VIP status to the accused. Chief Minister Oommen Chandy informed the Assembly in the morning that the government would not show any leniency to the Italians. Meanwhile, accusing the Congress-led United Democratic Front government of failing to ensure safety of the fishing community in Kerala, the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Democratic Front walked out of the Assembly on Monday. Opposition leader V S Achuthanandan led the walkout following rejection of their notice for an adjournment motion on the two deep sea incidents involving the shooting of two fishermen by Italian marines on February 15 and the ramming of a fishing boat by a runaway ship on March 1. Moving the notice for the motion, senior CPI (M) leader and former Labour minister PK Gurudasan accused the Oommen Chandy government of taking a soft attitude towards the Italian marines. He alleged that the government was bowing before the Italians. “The Italian deputy foreign minister arrived in Quilon without informing anyone and he tried to meet the family of one of the fishermen who was shot dead? How can such a thing happen in a democratic country,” he asked. He also accused the government of trying to protect the Italian naval officers by wrongly noting the location of the ship involved in the firing incident in the first information report (FIR) filed by the police. He pointed out that the location was mentioned as 33km in the FIR while in the remand notice of the two marines it was mentioned as 22.5km. This, he said, will weaken the case in the court as the Italians were claiming that the incident had taken place in international waters. Gurudasan who hails from Quilon, from where the five dead fishermen hail, said that this was deliberately done by the government to extricate the Italian marines from the case. The opposition leader said the two Italian marines who allegedly shot dead the two Indian fishermen were being given VIP status.