Two Italian marines involved in a shooting incident off the waters of Kerala on 15 February 2012, in which two Indian fishermen died, are to be tried in a special court. Ruling on the matter on 18 January the Supreme Court directed the government to dispose of the case in accordance with the provisions of the Maritime Zones Act, 1976, the Indian Penal Code, the Code of Criminal Procedure and the provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, 1982.
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Holding that the state of Kerala has no jurisdiction to investigate into the incident that involved an Italian merchant ship, MT Enrica Lexie, the court said that such matters have to be “conducted only at the level of the federal or central government and cannot be the subject matter of a proceeding initiated by a provincial/state government”.
However, speaking to India Business Law Journal Syam Kumar, a partner at Southern Law Chambers in Ernakulum in Kerala, said: “Unlike the United States, India does not have this concept of federal crime. The court apparently seems to look upon this as a federal offence in which only central government can have jurisdiction. I don’t find any legal norm where we can fix this reasoning of the court.”
Kumar, who recently acted for a charterer whose ship, MV Izumo, was involved in a hit-and-run incident off the waters of Kerala, said that he had no doubt that such cases are “going to happen more frequently”.
He noted that while it is often said that more ships go along the Indian coast to avoid pirate attacks further out in sea, a “more practical and logical reason” is that crews on board prefer to stay close to Indian territorial waters “as they get better mobile phone coverage”.
While the owners of MV Izumo have paid ₹1.95 million as compensation to the three fishermen involved in the accident, the families of the two victims in the MT Enrica Lexie case received ₹10 million each.
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