A child’s golden shoe next to a woman’s blue slippers were among the items that puzzled residents who stumbled upon them at Kochi’s Munambam harbour in January this year. In the next few days, clothes, bags and food packets surfaced at different places, dumped mysteriously along the northern coast of Ernakulam. Initial investigation revealed that in a well coordinated operation to smuggle out men, women and children to foreign countries, about 243 people, including Sri Lankan Tamils settled in Delhi, had set sail for an unknown destination in an ordinary boat “stuffed like fish trays”.
 

A child’s golden shoe next to a woman’s blue slippers were among the items that puzzled residents who stumbled upon them at Kochi’s Munambam harbour in January this year. In the next few days, clothes, bags and food packets surfaced at different places, dumped mysteriously along the northern coast of Ernakulam. Initial investigation revealed that in a well coordinated operation to smuggle out men, women and children to foreign countries, about 243 people, including Sri Lankan Tamils settled in Delhi, had set sail for an unknown destination in an ordinary boat “stuffed like fish trays”.