inkisaar

Indian-Pakistani joint venture in human smuggling
Colombo, September 1

The powers-that-be in India and Pakistan may scoff at mutual
co-operation and trade, and ban sporting and cultural exchanges at the
drop of a hat. But between the underworlds of the two countries, it's
a different ball game altogether. It is Bhai Bhai.

The Sri Lankan police recently stumbled upon a multi-million rupee
Indo-Pak "joint venture" in human smuggling, run by one Joga Singh
from the Indian Punjab and one Anwar from Pakistan. And with some Sri
Lankans and Bangladeshis thrown in, the venture has had a SAARC
flavour too.

"Till July this year, we had arrested 851 illegal immigrants en route
to Italy and other destinations in Europe. They were mostly Indians
and Pakistanis. The facilitators were two Indians and a Pakistani,"
DSY Samaratunge, Senior Superintendent of Police in the anti-human
smuggling cell of the Sri Lanka Police, told Hindustan Times. The
facilitators had been "identified" but not caught, he said.

According to the The Island daily, Joga Singh had married a
23-year-old Sri Lankan girl and was co-ordinating with Sri Lankan
parties, whose kingpin has been identified as "Munesinghe".

The paper describes the Indo-Pak duo as "millionaires". But Samartunge
would only say that the racketeers were making a neat pile. "Each
emigrant pays US$ 1,000 as a first instalment, another $ 1,000 on
arrival in Sri Lanka, and a further $ 2,000 on arrival at the final
destination somewhere in Europe. In all it comes to $ 4,000 (the
equivalent of Indian Rs.200,000)," he said.

Sri Lanka was not on the radar screen of Indo-Pak human smugglers as a
transit point until the island's Government announced that it would
give visas on arrival to boost tourism, especially from India. The
liberalism associated with tourism had made Sri Lanka attractive for a
variety of activities, including human smuggling.

The opening up of Sri Lanka following the commencement of the peace
process in the island, came like manna from heaven for human smugglers
struggling to take their clients out from the well- guarded shores of
India and Pakistan. Sri Lanka has no coast guard as such, and the Sri
Lankan Navy's concentration is along the north-eastern coast, well out
of the smugglers' way.

Being a tourist country, Sri Lanka's local population and the police
take no particular notice of foreigners in their midst. Spending a
month loitering about, arouses no suspicion here. Since corruption is
as widespread as in any other South Asian country, hush money works in
case the authorities apply the heat.

The first phase of the illegal immigrants' journey is perfectly
legal. They come by air to Colombo, often via Bangkok, absolutely
legally as bona fide as tourists. With tourist visas obtained at the
airport, they are shunted away to lodges in Negombo, north of the
airport, for a day and are then shifted to one of the up-country
tourist spots, where they are made to cool their heels till the ship,
which is to take them to Egypt,Italy or Sicily, arrives off the
south-western coast of the island.

These ships, which are shady cargo vessels, anchor in the deep sea off
Tangalle, a stretch which is poorly guarded. The waiting men are taken
in hired local fishing trawlers and put on board the ship.

Unconfirmed reports say that rich fish businessmen called "mudalalis",
with very high ministerial connections, are part of the racket.

Many of the human cargo must be making it to their destinations. But
snags do occur and dreams do get dashed. Last year, there was a group
of Sikhs from Gurdaspur and Jullandhar who were stranded in Galle
because the ship which was to come to take them did not turn up. The
men had run out of money too. These rough hewn peasants, who had been
given forged sailors' certificates and forged passports by a
Delhi-based smuggler, were rounded up and deported to India.

In May this year, a group of hopefuls came to grief when the crew of
their ship abandoned the vessel because the owner had failed to pay
their wages. The Sri Lankan police discovered that the ship in
question, which was drifting off the Moratuwa coast, south of
Colombo, was to be wantonly destroyed at the end of the trip to
defraud its Maldivian insurers. Apparently, there is more to human
smuggling than just human smuggling.

Lanka-based NRIs cripple Indian copper industry

Eight Indian businessmen who had set themselves up in Sri Lanka with
the avowed purpose of importing copper scrap and re-exporting it to
India after a stipulated value addition to avail of a duty concession
under the Indo-Lanka Free Trade Agreement, have defrauded both
countries to the tune of millions of dollars and dealt a severe blow
to the Indian copper industry.

The fraud could be of the order of USD 10 to 15 million, official
sources told Hindustan Times. The glut which the businessmen created
in the Indian copper market, has put an estimated 6,000 jobs in India
and 1,500 in Sri Lanka, in danger. When the fraud was discovered
following an outcry in India, the perpetrators vanished into thin air.

Instead of importing scrap, adding 35 per cent value to it and then
exporting the finished copper wire to India to take advantage of the
2.5 per cent concessional duty there, these parties imported slightly
twisted copper wire or ingots and after straightening them by a simple
process, had exported them to India, brazenly claiming the required
value addition and availing the concessional duty. The normal duty for
imported copper wire is 25 per cent.

They had made false declarations during import and export and deprived
the Sri Lankan and Indian customs millions of dollars of revenue, the
sources said.

When the Sri Lankan authorities investigated one of them (who
accounted for 65 per cent of the exports of copper wire to India in
the past 18 months), they found that he had no manufacturing facility
to make the kind of value addition required.

Over the last 18 months, these fly-by-night NRIs had dumped about
47,000 mt of copper wire and ingots on India when the latter could
absorb only 7,000 mt of imports, the sources said. The dumping had
created a serious crisis in the Indian copper industry, the
possibility of unemployment being just one of them.

With a glut in the Indian market triggering protests from the domestic
industry, India has clamped down on imports. This has affected nine
Indian furnace owners still left in Sri Lanka. About 500 jobs for
Indians and another 1,000 jobs for locals, are currently endangered,
these smelters complain.

Kurien for Lanka's rescue

Sri Lanka is now looking towards Dr Kurien, the father of Indian white
revolution, for its troubled dairy industry.

Western powdered milk manufacturers are dumping their products on Sri
Lanka, and have killed its domestic dairy industry.

Importing about LKR 10 billion (approximately USD 105 million) worth
of powdered milk from New Zealand and Australia, today Sri Lanka is
the largest importer of this product in Asia. The impact of this could
be seen in the statistics given recently by the Minister of
Agriculture, SB Dissanayake. He said that while in 1978, 80 per cent
of the milk requirements of Sri Lanka was met by domestic producers,
now 80 per cent of the requirement was met with imports. Dissanayake
wants to reverse this trend.

Last year, he tried enhancing the duty on imported powdered milk from
the prevailing measly 10 per cent to levels prevailing in other
countries. With this enhanced duty, he was hoping to net LKR 500
million (about USD 5.2 million) through which the Government could
finance the development of indigenous capacity. But, as he himself put
it, the "tough milk mafia" thwarted it. However, he got the Ministry
of Livestock Development to start an LKR 150 million dairy development
project.

Acute problems require radical solutions. The energetic minister had
no hesitation in looking to India for the panacea.

Despite past failures to emulate the Anand model, Dissanayake turned
to Dr V Kurien, the father of the Indian White Revolution.

Dr Kurien of the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation,
visited Sri Lanka in October 2002 and offered to set up a INR 10 crore
worth milk plant free of cost and also a cattle feed plant at Chennai
or any other convenient port in India to ship the feed to Sri Lanka.
He preferred Indian feed because it had groundnut, oil seeds or soya
in it, in contrast to the rather nutritionally inferior traditional
"punaang" used by Sri Lankan farmers. He even said that the plant
could be run by Sri Lankans.

But the Sri Lankan government took its own time following up. It was
only recently that Dissanayake came back on the matter.

The Indian authorities contacted Dr Kurien again, and tireless as he
was, he promptly said that he could arrange to give training to Sri
Lankan personnel, again, free of cost. Colombo's response is awaited.

(PK Balachanddran is Sri Lanka correspondent of Hindustan Times)