A court in Thoothukudi in Tamil Nadu on Monday sentenced 35 people arrested from the Seaman Guard Ohio, a US ship taken into custody by the Indian Coast Guard in 2013, to rigorous imprisonment for five years. Those sentenced include 12 crew members and 23 security guards.
N Rajasekar, the district Principal Sessions Court Judge, sentenced those on-board the ship for possessing arms and ammunition without valid documents and for trespassing into Indian waters. They were sentenced under Sections 25 1(A), 1(B) A, Section 25 1(B) F of the Indian Penal Code. The judge also ordered each of the accused to pay a fine of `3,000 each.
The incident occurred on October 12, 2013, when an Indian Coast Guard ship came across Seaman Guard Ohio, a ship belonging to a US-based company, moving suspiciously in Indian waters. The crew of the ship could not give satisfactory answers to the queries of the Coast Guard and hence the ship was brought to Thoothukudi Port and handed over to the police.
The police and Coast Guard officials were taken aback by the quantity of arms and ammunition stored in the ship. The words “floating armoury” and “hired mercenaries” were used by the authorities to describe the ship, its crew and the security men on board. There were 12 Indians, three Ukrainians, six British and 14 Estonian nationals among them.
They faced charges under the Arms Act and were slapped with sections of Essential Commodities Act after the authorities found that they had bought diesel from a local agent in violation of law. The Tharuvaikulam Marine Police filed the FIR on October 12, 2013 and on the subsequent day the Tamil Nadu police filed a case under the Arms Act and the Essential Commodities Act.
Though AdvanFort, the company which claimed ownership of the ship, had told media persons at the time of the arrest that they had all the relevant documents with them, nothing was heard afterwards.