Kolkata: India’s coast guard personnel have rescued 81 Rohingya refugees from a boat adrift in the Andaman Sea.

“The engine of the boat failed on February 15 and since then it has been drifting,” Indian Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson Anurag Srivastava said in a press briefing on February 25.

Earlier, the United Nations refugee agency had raised the alarm over the missing boat, which had left Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar on February 11.

Indian had dispatched two Indian coast guard ships to search for the boat following urgent calls for help.

The vessels found 81 survivors and eight dead on the boat crammed with Muslim Rohingya refugees.

The survivors were being provided with food supplies and medicine, and women and children have been given fresh clothes. It was unclear what arrangements were being made for the funeral rites of the people who perished, the spokesman added.

The Indian official said they tried their best to save lives in a humanitarian crisis.

The foreign ministry is working towards sending the survivors back to Bangladesh while Indian repair or replace the boat’s engine to ensure they can travel back safely.

Many of the survivors were sick and suffering from extreme dehydration, having run out of food and water after the boat’s engine failed four days after leaving Cox’s Bazar, where refugee camps house hundreds of thousands of Rohingya who have fled neighboring Myanmar.

Of the 90 people that had set out on the voyage, eight were found dead, and one was missing, Srivasta said. Talks were underway with Bangladesh for the safe return of the 81 survivors, he added.

“Bangladesh is respectful of its international obligations under the UNCLOS (The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea),” Bangladesh’s foreign ministry said in a statement.

On earlier occasions when other littoral countries of the region repeatedly denied access to Rohingya adrift at sea, it was the Bangladesh that came to the rescue, the ministry added.

More than 1 million Rohingya refugees from Myanmar are living in crowded camps in Bangladesh, including tens of thousands who fled after Myanmar’s military conducted a deadly crackdown in 2017.

Human traffickers often lure Rohingya refugees, promising them work in Southeast Asian nations.

India is not a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention, which spells out refugee rights and state responsibilities to protect them. Nor does it have a domestic law protecting refugees, though it currently hosts more than 200,000, including some Rohingya.
While India diplomats sought ways to resolve the humanitarian crisis in the Andaman Sea, Indian President Ram Nath Kovind was set to visit islands there during coming days.

Source: agencies