Anupama Mili By

KOZHIKODE: On the day the apex court allowed an Italian marine accused of killing two Indian fishermen to extend his stay in his home country on medical grounds, it has come to light that 12 Indian sailors are interred in an Italian jail on drug trafficking charges.

According to the Indian Embassy in Rome, it has the list of 12 Indians, sailors, arrested from aboard a ship seized by Italian police in June, 2014, and accused of possessing a huge quantity of drugs. Their trial is yet to begin.

‘Express’ had reported on April 4 that 66 Indians were languishing in various prisons of Italy. The Indian Consulate in Italy had stated that they do not have any information regarding the name, age, gender or passport number of these prisoners.

The embassy in reply to RTI activist Mahesh Vijayan has named 12 people, but it is not clear the states to which they belong. Those under custody are: Fernandes Lionel, Gupta Hridaynarayan Premchand, Pramod Singh, Arjun Rajkumar Mishra, Nelson Sahaya Shejo, Rajendran Kannan, Nilaykumar Ramaniklal Tandel, John Milton Retnam Jesuretnam, Joseph Sherin, Rohiteshwar Singh, Gurdial Singh and Bhupendar Singh.

According to the embassy, there are 145 Indians in 53 different Italian jails. Fifty out of them have already been sentenced and are serving their jail terms. Trial is yet to conclude in the remaining 95 cases. Out of the 50 who are serving jail terms, 25 are in prisons falling under the consular jurisdiction of the Mission in Rome. The rest are in detention facilities under the consular jurisdiction of the Milan Mission.

Deepti Jharwal, second secretary (CPV), said that “due to strict privacy laws in Italy, the Mission cannot access any prisoner without consent of the prisoner himself. Fearing their deportation to India by the embassy, the prisoners, in general, do not give consent to intimate their arrest to the embassy.”