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Lankan Tamil refugees recount horrorific escape
When Mary Joseph Beny (55), with six of her family and 14 others, boarded a small, battered fibre boat fitted with an outboard motor at Mullaithivu on the northern-most tip of Sri Lanka on April 20, she hoped to reach the safety of Rameswaram in Tamil Nadu, about 25 km away, in two hours.
When Mary Joseph Beny (55), with six of her family and 14 others, boarded a small, battered fibre boat fitted with an outboard motor at Mullaithivu on the northern-most tip of Sri Lanka on April 20, she hoped to reach the safety of Rameswaram in Tamil Nadu, about 25 km away, in two hours.
But they lost their way, missed Rameswaram and, with the fuel tank running empty, drifted 1,300 km to reach Kakinada in Andhra Pradesh nine days later. On the way, Beny had to throw overboard the bodies of her husband and four children.
Benny is lucky to be still alive, so is one of her daughters. But she has lost two sons, one daughter and a four-year-old grandson.
“We are fishermen. With the war going on, we could not venture out for fishing. We had no work and no food. Finally, we decided to escape to Rameswaram by a fibre boat about 20 feet in length and six feet in width,” Beny said.
“We thought it would take us two hours and stored whatever little food and water we had. But the person guiding us died suddenly. We were drifting aimlessly with the hot summer sun blazing on us.”
When the boat washed up at Uppada, few kilometers away from the Kakinada deep- water port at night on April 29, there were only 10 people barely alive. She said, “First, the children died, then the aged. We had no option but to throw the bodies overboard,” she said.
Meanwhile, East Godavari District Collector Gopalakrishna Dwivedi said the refugees would be sent to one of the rehabilitation camps being run by the Tamil Nadu government once they fully recovered.
The police have registered a case under the Foreigners act and notified the External affairs Ministry.
