Fishermen traced to Bangladesh island

KOLKATA: Six days after being taken hostage by a band of pirates mid-sea last Friday, 10 fishermen and the driver on board have been found safe in a Bangladeshi island of the Sunderbans. However, mystery shrouds the whereabouts of the pirates and whether they freed their hostages or the victims overpowered them.

After sailing for six days on the Bay of Bengal, trawler Ma Tara ran out of fuel and floated mid-sea for a few nautical miles before docking at Shilar Chor Island in Bangladesh on Thursday evening.

After spending the night in the trawler, its driver Narayan Das and other fishermen got off and began walking through the forest in Shilar Chor on Friday morning. Soon, they hit a road, raising their hope of finding human habitat on the island. They then met guards of the Bangladeshi forest department patrolling along the road. The fishermen were then taken to the forest office after being questioned. An officer there assured them all help and allowed Das to make a call to his owner Ranjit Halder in Kakdwip, South 24-Parganas.

“We spoke for just seven minutes and the phone link apparently snapped. He told me that he and his passengers were safe and in good health. The trawler too was safe. I would have asked him about the pirates but the line snapped. I have been trying to call back at the number but am not getting through,” said Halder.

Later, the Kakdwip Fishermen’s Unnayan Samity secretary Bijon Maity managed to get through to the Shilar Chor forest office number in Bangladesh’s Bagerhat district. He was told that Das and his passengers had been taken to the local Sharom Khola police station.

“We are trying to verify this information and are contacting the Bangladesh authorities to bring them back,” said South 24-Parganas district magistrate Narayan Swarup Nigam.

A band of 17 brigands attacked three of 12 fishing trawlers that had sailed out to sea from Kakdwip on January 26 with a large group of fishermen, each carrying 10-12 of them. After a night halt at Kendo Island in the Sunderbans that night, the fishermen sailed out the next morning when three trawlers — Ma basanti I, Ma Basanti II and Ma Tara — fell behind the others. Seizing the moment, a band of 17 pirates hiding in the forests on Kendo Island boarded their mechanized boat and waylaid the three trawlers. The brigands launched a fierce attack with firearms after splitting themselves into groups that boarded all three trawlers.

Three fishermen on board the Ma Basanti I trawler were killed in indiscriminate firing by the brigands while fishermen on board the Ma Basanti II trawler managed to overpower five of their attackers who were later arrested.

On sighting police patrol boats heading towards them, 12 of the pirates sped away on board Ma Tara and their mechanized boat, taking 11 people hostage.

CM takes Writers’ to Sunderbans

Sunderbans: Rows and rows of launches, speed boats and their incessant noise broke the silence of the pristine blue-green of the saline Sunderbans water on Wednesday. Chief minister Mamata Banerjee was on a mission amidst this sublime green, it seemed, and she was not alone there.

It was an unusual convoy to begin with. This entourage was, after all, on water. And almost the whole of Writers’ Buildings was with her entourage too – true to the CM’s words that she would take Writers’ to the districts. The convoy toured the islands for almost six hours since 11 am. Chief secretary Samar Ghosh, home secretary G D Gautama, principal secretaries of forest, tourism, power, disaster management and so on, as well as a large number of journalists and government officials and police were part of this unique riverine jamboree. There were more than 25 launches (from the pool of transport, irrigation, tourism departments and police), plus two West Bengal Police speed boats. Altogether, there were over 600 people of this waterways convoy.

It was clear that the CM was mixing business with pleasure as she looked at the mangrove forests from island to island in the Sunderbans for nearly six hours. She was in a jovial mood, chatting mostly on the deck, but also taking the driver’s (sareng) seat, trying to figure out the nitty-gritty of driving a launch, and even taking the wheels for a few moments. Mamata also sang with those in her company on the launch, and though she eats frugally, the others had a filling lunch, too. Panchayat and public health engineering minister Subrata Mukherjee, Sunderbans affairs minister Shyamal Mandal and local MLA Jayanta Naskar were among those present, along with some journalists who usually travel with the chief minister. Many others followed her convoy.

But it wasn’t strictly office work with a changed venue. For, the chief secretary, home secretary and the group of other principal secretaries were on another launch. Ghosh is known not to miss office even on Saturdays and sometimes drops by at Writers’ Buildings even on Sundays and other holidays when there is more work. So he seemed a bit ill at ease sitting on the deck of a launch for almost six hours in the company of other secretaries, but not exactly holding an official meeting. Or perhaps he and the other IAS officers did enjoy this unusual tour? It is not known for sure. IPS officer Virendra – who oversees the CM’s security and accompanies her on most of her trips – seemed to enjoy being on a speed boat, looking not at usual challenges of the roads, but to see if everything was clear on the waterway. He had for company district magistrate N S Nigam and superintendent of police of South 24-Parganas, L N Meena.

The CM had said in Tuesday’s public meeting at Gosaba that she had gone to the Sunderbans to see the place with her own eyes and talk to the people there. She also wants to make it a tourism hotspot, which will bring huge employment for local people. Starting her day from Sajnekhali where she had stayed at night, the CM toured one island after another – through Pakhirala, Dayapur, Santjelia, Kochukhali, Rangabelia, Gosaba, and finally moving out through Sonakhali – for almost six hours since 11 am. She went close to Marichjhhapi, but did not venture till the uninhabited island. Over three decades ago, police went on an eviction drive in the Marichjhapi island of the Sunderbans to oust refugees who had moved from Dandakaranya. The entire episode is shrouded in mystery and it is not clear how many lives were lost, and is often considered by many as the darkest blot on the Left Front regime.

When her launch passed by these islands – most of which are habitations – people flocked in large numbers, and Mamata waved at the villagers and they waved back at her. From schoolchildren to lungi-clad poor fishermen, they were all there, sometimes in huge clusters and often one or two waiting in solitude. During the six-hour visit, Mamata stopped only at Pakhirala, where she distributed blankets among some Aila victims. Pakhirala, which is one of the main tourist centres in the Sunderbans, and where many tourist lodges are housed, is where Mamata looked around, and said that tourism needs a huge boost here.

Her main programme with the villagers was on Tuesday at Gosaba where she distributed land rights to rice, and cheques for various schemes to the poor. Her thrust on Wednesday appeared to be to check out a huge stretch of the islands to see how tourism could be promoted here. She had even said at the Gosaba programme that there were central government representatives there to see if projects could be taken up there, but this was not disclosed any further.

Preparations were on for the Wednesday tour since 6.30 am, with the launch and speedboats doing the rounds. Boats are charged at nearly Rs 10,000 for such long hours, so in that case so many boats and launches put together would have made the cost a few lakh. However, officials said that since these are under different government departments, the rate of fuel is the only significant cost, and hiring charges are not so much.

Vikram likes tweeting of a different kind

KOLKATA: Celebrated Author Vikram Seth is not keen on joining Twitter. But he acknowledges he cannot avoid it altogether if he is to write his next book.

“I like living as private a life as possible, except after a book launch (when the publisher’s promotional demands require him to be in the public sphere). I am actually very lazy. I like to stay in as much as possible. Twitter is almost the opposite, intruding into the private space. I like the kind of tweeting that I got to hear in the Sunderbans,” Seth said, referring to the chirping of birds that he heard during the weekend trip to the mangrove delta.

He, however, admits that he cannot afford to stay isolated from the phenomenon that is nearly a rage among celebrities and the youth world over. “I want to know how it functions and what goes on in the Twitter community. If I am to write a new book, I must know about it,” he said on the eve of his Santiniketan trip. But he made it clear that he has no intention of becoming a tweeple yet.

And he certainly does not intend to indulge in Twitter sparring like Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie and popular writer Chetan Bhagat did recently. After the conclusion of the Jaipur Literary Festival, Rushdie tweeted against Bhagat who had spoken out in opposition of Rushdie. and his banned book ‘The Satanic Verses’.

Addressing the tweet directly to Bhagat, Rushdie said, “Chetan Bhagat: people like me are liberal extremists & as bad as the fundos. I’m being Bhaggered!! It’s like being molested by Dan Brown!”

Responding to Rushdie’s barb, Chetan tweeted, “Someone’s feeling neglected as the controversy died down and the country moved on. Hence the personal attacks. Will pass. Peace.” Later, at the Kolkata Literary Meet, Bhagat said he was actually glad that Rushdie had, through his tweet, told the world that he was as famous as popular fiction writer Dan Brown.

Refraining from fuelling the lively exchange between the two writers, Seth said he had healthy respect for both. “I don’t think anyone should be banned. If you don’t like a book, set it aside,” he said., adding that Bhagat was an extremely successful writer of novels in English for an Indian audience.

Seth’s mother Leila enjoys Bhagat and has read all of them except the latest one. “I was in hospital when I read ’2 States’ and enjoyed it thoroughly. The day Bhagat had a session at 9 in the morning at the Jaipur Lit Fest, I thought let me go and have a look at what the best-selling author is about. I was impressed. The hall that is usually sparsely filled in morning sessions was jam packed.

I even managed to speak to him,” she said.

On the ban on Rushdie, Leila, who was the first woman Chief Justice of India, felt it was more political than anything. “If they had wanted to give security (to Rushdie), they could have. It is a political feeling that I will miss out on some vote bank that prevented them from doing so,” she said.

As for tweeting, she just isn’t interested. “I don’t even like the cellphone and use it only to call the driver or when I am out of town. I want privacy. With cellphones, one doesn’t even get time to think,” she said.

India’s first tiger rescue centre in Sunderbans

KOLKATA: The first tiger rescue centre of the country will be ready to welcome big cats in three months. Being developed at Jharkhali in the Sunderbans, the centre will provide asylum to injured and straying tigers that are either brought to Kolkata for treatment or released in far corners of the mangrove forest. Even though fenced off from the rest of the jungle, the centre will be contiguous to the main Sunderbans and allow tigers to roam free in the wild. They will, however, not be able to leave the centre which will be fenced off.

Work on the centre’s outer fence is complete. Fifteen feet high iron bars have been erected to create a boundary that cuts it from the rest of the forest. There will be an inner periphery with a lower fence made of bars interspersed with chain-links. It will mark separate enclosures for four tigers across a 100-acre area. Adjacent to the Chhoto Herobhanga river, the centre will be enclosed on all four sides and have waterbodies apart from enough mangrove cover for tigers to feel “at home”, said Pradip Vyas, director, Sunderban Biosphere Reserve. “It will allow us to treat injured tigers in the forest itself which will spare them the agony of having to spend months at the zoo hospital in Alipore. While they will be able to stay back in the forest, the tigers will remain protected at the centre.

More importantly, they will have an assured supply of foodwhich will help the injured big cats recover fast. The straying tigers, too, will get used to remaining confined in the jungle,” said Vyas.

The forest department is waiting for funds to commence work on the second phase of the centre. This includes the inner fence that separates the individual enclosures. It has been designed in such a way that won’t allow tigers to cross over to the next enclosure. Neither can they reach the Herobhanga river and swim to villages. There will, however, be waterbodies, both natural and artificial. “Some of the natural waterbodies are being extended to suit the tigers. There are several natural ones inside the area. Food will be provided by the forest department, for we don’t want the injured tigers to hunt. Nor would we like straying tigers to search for easy prey,” said Vyas. The only other tiger rehabilitation centre in the state is located at Khairbari in North Bengal. It is, however, not an open centre and tigers are kept in cages. “We are keen to make sure that the Jharkhali centre does not turn into a zoo for ageing and injured big cats. Neither do we want injured tigers to spend months in a constricted hospital, away from the forest environment. This is an ideal setting that we can have,” added Vyas.

Two squeeze cages and four ordinary ones have been placed at the centre. These will be used for treatment. A team of veterinary surgeons will be posted along with a group of forest department staff who will monitor the big cats. The centre will also have a watch-tower. “We have marked corridors around the centre that will be patrolled by forest guards who will keep a watch,” said Vyas.

To begin with, two tigers will receive shelter at the centre. It can accommodate two more and treat at least four to six big cats simultaneously. The forest department is also planning to shift some of the ageing tigers of Alipore Zoo to the centre. “The zoo has a space problemwhile there will be enough room for 2-3 tigers at Jharkhali

. Depending on the availability of space, we can accommodate a couple of tigers here. But we must consult experts to find out if zoo tigers can acclimatize to the forest conditions,” said a forest department official.

Experts hailed the move. to have a natural rehabilitation centre for tigers.

“It will let the tigers remain in their natural habitat and home environment,” said Pranabesh Sanyal, former director of Sunderban Tiger Reserve. “The authorities should make sure that the rescue centre functions as such and doesn’t turn into a zoo in the jungle,” said Joydeep Kundu, member of the state wildlife board.