Eight Rameswaram fishermen freed by Sri Lanka fly home to Chennai

Eight fishermen from Rameswaram who spent a month in a Sri Lankan prison were back in Tamil Nadu on Friday, November 6, 2026, after flying home from Colombo overnight.

The men were part of a crew of nine who set out from Rameswaram on a mechanised boat on October 3. Around midnight, a Sri Lankan Navy patrol stopped them while they were fishing near Neduntheevu, also called Delft Island, and arrested them for fishing in Sri Lankan waters. The navy also seized the boat, its nets and the catch.

The nine were produced before a local court and sent to prison in Jaffna. The central and Tamil Nadu governments then took up their case with Sri Lankan officials.

On October 30 a Sri Lankan court ordered eight of the nine released. The boat’s driver, who had been caught by the Sri Lankan Navy once before, was given a three-month prison sentence after this second arrest.

The eight were handed to Indian diplomats in Sri Lanka and stayed at a camp run by the Indian mission while officials issued them emergency travel certificates. They left Colombo late on Thursday night on a passenger flight and landed in Chennai early on Friday.

Officials of the Tamil Nadu fisheries department received them at the airport, and the state government arranged a vehicle to take them home to Rameswaram.

The arrests of Tamil Nadu fishermen in the narrow Palk Strait remain a regular friction point between the two countries, with boats from Rameswaram and the delta districts often stopped on the Sri Lankan side of the maritime boundary. The return comes in a hard week for the state’s fishing families, after Cyclone Murasu left fishermen from Chennai’s Kasimedu dead or missing off the Andhra coast.