One of the few to survive the Malta boat tragedy of December 25, 1996, the worst maritime disaster in the Mediterranean since the World War II, Mandeep Singh, 23, had returned home to Kala Sanghian near Jalandhar dreading the thought of ever stepping out.

Today he is back in Italy.

Mandeep was among the 300-odd illegal immigrants to Italy who were lowered from the Yiohan, a cargo ship, into a former RAF search-and-rescue launch capable of holding only 100. Some fell overboard, while most others drowned in the icy waters when the boat capsized. The final toll was 283 south Asians, including 170 from Punjab.

Mandeep says it wasn’t an accident but a deliberate act of betrayal by a crew that couldn’t get its human cargo anywhere. For years, he battled the demons of that night when he hung on to a rope for his life while his best friend drowned. Finally a year and half ago, he completed his passage to Italy.

Speaking on phone from Reggio Calabria where he works as a mason, he says he took the risk to give a better future to his seven-year-old son.

Balwant Singh Khera, chairman of the Malta Boat Tragedy Probe Mission, an NGO that is fighting for compensation for the families of the victims, says this is not an isolated case. “Most of the survivors returned, again through agents, and many affected families sent others sons abroad,” he says.

Jasbir Singh, a marginal farmer of Manan village in Kapurthala, knows it only too well. His eldest son Balvinder Singh, who also had a miraculous escape in the Malta incident, took off for the US six years ago on a tourist visa, and is now a policeman in Washington, while his younger two sons, Harvinder and Gurvinder, are in Italy.

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