On April 11, Indian Coast Guard officials secured six Lankan Tamils, Ravikumar, Bonibass, Robin, Arul Gnanadasan, Arul and Selvakumar from the Maria off the Kanyakumari coast. Six Kanyakumari fishermen who had ‘rescued’ them in their country boats were also questioned. All 12 were later handed over to the local police for interrogation.

Since the boat involved in the Kanyakumari firing was also called Maria, the survivors of the attack were shown the boat and the men for identification. However, they said the boat was not the same one involved in the attack and the men were not their attackers. The Lankan Tamils were remanded to judicial custody and cases registered against them in the Thermal Nagar police station under sections of the Passports Act. Later, they were taken into police custody .”

On April 23, the case was transferred to the state ‘Q’ branch. It was during the interrogation by the ‘Q’ Branch it came to be known that all the six Lankan Tamils belonged to the Sea Tigers. “They and some other groups of Sea Tigers used to smuggle arms and ammunition from a ship belonging to the LTTE in the high seas and fetch them to their camp in Sri Lanka,” the DGP said.