Malpe, December 24: The search operation for eight fishermen who were missing in the deep sea along with the boat continued on Monday, but no clues were found so far, sources said.

The family members of eight fishermen boat owner Badanidiyur Chandrashekar (40), Damodar Badanidiyur (40), Lakshman of Kumta (45), Sathish (35), Harish (28), Ramesh (30), Jogaiah (40) and Ravi Monkey (27) were panic. All of them had ventured into the sea in Suvarna Thribhuja boat on December 13 at 11 pm from  Malpe port. After December 15 midnight, all of them were not reachable and missing. It is said that the boat was missing around 40-50 km Goa-Rathnagiri route from the sea shore.

As a missing case registered at Malpe police station, Fisheries department and police have informed the Mangaluru Coast Guard who in turn informed the Goa Coast Guard. Now, both Goa and Mangaluru Coast Guard teams have been searching for the missing boat and fishermen, but no information was available, sources said.

Fisheries department deputy director Parshwanath told Varthabharathi that ‘Mangaluru Coast Guard officials are in touch with us. They have continued their search operation. But no information is available so far”, he said.

Kidnap suspected

This is the first incident in Malpe port where fishermen were missing along with the boat. Some boats of Malpe have been searching in Goa-Rathnagiri sea range, but no information was received. If the boat is believed to be drowned, there must be some clues like diesel smell, cans or parts of the boat must have floated on the water. But there was no such clue in the sea. So, it is suspected that pirates might have kidnapped them, said Malpe Fishermen Association president Sathish Kunder.

CM contacted: Pramod Madhwaraj

Former fisheries minister Pramod Madhwaraj said that he has informed Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy and DGP Neelamani N Raju over phone on missing of fishermen along with a fishing boat from Malpe port.

As the fishermen met Madhwaraj at his home and informed the incident, latter had contacted the CM and the DGP and urged them to take the issue seriously and constitute a special team to trace the fishermen shortly.

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New Delhi (PTI): Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said on Saturday that he and other AAP leaders would go to the BJP headquarters on March 19 "so that the prime minister can send anyone he wants to jail".

The BJP is saying they will send AAP MP Raghav Chadha and Delhi ministers Atishi and Saurabh Bharadwaj to jail too, he claimed at a press briefing hours after his aide Bibhav Kumar was arrested in connection with the alleged assault on his party's parliamentarian Swati Maliwal.

Kejriwal, who is also the AAP national convener, however, asserted that his party could not be crushed by sending its leaders to jail.

Accusing Prime Minister Narendra Modi of "playing the game" of sending AAP leaders such as Manish Sisodia, Satyendar Jain, and Sanjay Singh to jail, he said, "I along with my MLAs and MPs would go to the BJP office at noon tomorrow so that the prime minister can send anyone he wants to jail."

"The AAP is an idea. For as many AAP leaders you jail, the country would produce leaders a hundred times more," Kejriwal said.

He claimed that the AAP's "fault" was that its government in Delhi built good schools, set up Mohalla Clinics, provided free treatment and ensured free round-the-clock power supply in the city which the BJP could not do.

Kejriwal, who was arrested in a money laundering case linked to the alleged Delhi excise policy scam, has been granted interim bail till June 1 by the Supreme Court to campaign in the Lok Sabha polls. He will have to surrender and go back to jail on June 2, a day after the last phase of polling in the general elections.