The holiday, is not an official one, but every year between June and September 15, the joint sea patrol (joint patrolling by the customs, the navy and the state police), goes easy on their job and simply relax.

The reason is that there is no need for vigil during these months since the monsoons combined with inclement weather and rough seas would make it well nigh impossible for any Robinson Crusoe to navigate their way with contraband goods across seven seas and land at the Raigad shores.

This argument does not hold much water as it was discovered recently when a contraband goods landing did take place a month ago in Dighi where computer chips, Vitamin-B complex powder and gold biscuits were landedsurreptitiously under the cover of darkness. Locals claimed that it was the second landing in a span of two weeks.

It was much after the landing had taken place that the JSP crew realised that they had been taken for a ride. The March 1993 serial blasts has highlighted the intense need for alertness along the coasts, keeping a vigil for any alien boats and ships bringing in arms and explosives or contraband goods. However, the reality according to a customs officer, is that a smuggler or a terrorist well-versed with the whims of the high seas could easily smuggle anything into the country through the porous Raigad coasts. `In fact, we know for sure that they use our three month sabbatical, to smuggle in goods in a more vigorous manner. They have a field day for three full months,' the officer disclosed. With no equipment or vessels to match the smuggler's speedboats, and a negligible manpower, the JSP has its hand tied. Most importantly they would end up drowned or their vessels capsized in the rough seasduring monsoons, if they ventured to intercept the smugglers' speedboats.

According to Joint Commissioner of Customs A K Pandey, `Our vessels like the CPC Ganga or Damodar can chug along only on 22 nautical miles while the smugglers' whizzes past us at 60 knots, so where is the question of apprehending smugglers? We cannot intercept them even if we sight a suspicious vessel'. The JSP has also been reduced to a farce. Instituted soon after the March 12 serial bomb blasts in Mumbai when 8,000 kg of RDX was smuggled into the country through the Shekhadi and Dighi coasts in Raigad, the JSP was supposed to be a fitting reply to the designs of any enemy country and terrorists trying to smuggle plastic explosives through the porous Raigad coasts. However, the JSP financed by Central Government and administered by the respective state government as in Mumbai and Gujarat, is an exercise in futility.

The JSP with four state police persons, one customs inspector, two customs men and two navy men issuch a joke that it doesn't matter if they went on a twelve-month sabbatical. Their existence does not inspire any fear in the smugglers who continue to smuggle goods into the country through the Raigad coast, especially spots like Dighi, Shekhadi, Murud-Janjira and Hareshwar.

These spots also have approach roads which facilitate loading and unloading after every landing.

The topography of the Raigad coast makes it vulnerable to alien vessels unloading contraband goods or even guns here. The vast expanse of sea flanked by appropriate mountain cover and the primitive set-up is ideal for smugglers and even terrorists with diabolical designs for the country. If they want to smuggle plastic explosives and arms into Mumbai, the economic fountainhead of the country, Raigad is the ideal spot. The only way to combat them would be a very serious and concerned government, state-of-the-art vessels, fire-power, other equipments to detect ships and the best men drawn both from the local fishing community effective inthe art of high-sea navigation and the best in the state police, customs and the navy, besides encouraging local informants.

Right now the 10-member JSP crew that mans the Raigad coasts works under the elite Marine and Preventive Wing of the customs. However, the work conditions are so abysmal, that the men are not inspired to work. At the old Dighi jetty, there is no place for the JSP men to park themselves. Rain or shine, they squat like beggars outside the gates and verandahs of homes. There are no toilets, there is no resting place and no place to mount a vigil, no binoculars and no vessels. A coast guard vessel does the rounds once in a while. Naturally, despite several landings having taken place after March 12, 1993, the customs says that on record not a single landing has ever taken place between the Versova and Raigad coasts! For a stretch of over 700 km of coastline spanning Versova to Raigad, the JSP has just three vessels between September and June and only one after that!

The customs claimsthat there was no smuggling taking place since the local network was non-existent after the March 12 serial blasts and subsequent police hounding and that there were no landing agents working anymore for smugglers and that the carriers and the crossers were also no longer in business. Crossers are the ones who deftly navigate a boat to the mother vessel parked in the high seas and transfer the goods to the smaller boat and bring it to the shores. This is an art and not all fishermen can do it.

However, the argument by the customs that there has been no smuggling is specious, considering that several landings have taken place in the Raigad coast in the last few years, according to sources, both in the customs and the coastal information network. However, Pandey admits that gold has still not lost its burnish. The duty per 100 gm of gold was Rs 250 until December last year, but it has been hiked to Rs 400 per 100 gm since January this year, which means smugglers have a larger margin if they smuggle gold intothe country.