Five months after a boat reportedly used to traffic people went missing from the Kerala coast, there is still little information on the boat's whereabouts or its destination.
The Ministry of External Affairs on Friday said that they have not received any inputs on the location of the boat.
It is suspected that about 243 people, including children, left the shores of Munambam, near Kochi in Kerala, in a vessel named Deva Matha 2 on January 12.
“We have alerted countries in the region that could be the likely destination. We have not yet received any information from these countries,” Raveesh Kumar, a spokesperson for the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) posted on Twitter on Friday.
He also added that MEA will continue to follow the matter.
“When this incident happened, the state government of Kerala informed us and said that people were on the boat and it was headed to a particular location in Pacific Ocean. Our responsibility as Ministry of External Affairs was to sensitise the countries in those region. We also sought inputs from these countries if they have come across such a vessel. But we have not received any information back regarding this,” said Raveesh Kumar in a press meet held in New Delhi on Thursday.
According to reports, investigations by Kerala Police, Special Branch and even the Intelligence Wing have not been able to find any developments on the issue.
However, it had been found that a group of migrants had stayed at a rented house in New Delhi on January 5. They came to Kerala and stayed in resorts in Ernakulam district for a while. Here they had provided the address of that rented house in New Delhi as their own.
The boat was reportedly purchased by the people paying Rs 1.02 crore in cash to a local person. It is also alleged that the group also purchased about 12,000 litres of diesel costing Rs 10 lakh and five water tankers while staying in a coastal resort in Ernakulam.