Kerala government sanctions research into Enrica Lexie incident

Two Indian fishermen — Valentine Jelastine of Kollam and Ajeesh Pink of Kanyakumari — were killed in the Arabian Sea on 15 February, 2012, when two Italian marines on board the Italian vessel Enrica Lexie fired shots at them.

The fishermen were on board the fishing vessel St Antony, which was approximately 20.5 nautical miles off the coast of Kerala when the incident occurred.

The marines were of the stance that they mistook the vessel as that of pirates, and thus fired.

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Who is going to conduct the research?

It was an assistant professor of the Department of Physics of the Government College for Women in Thiruvananthapuram who had approached the government with a research request.

The faculty member, Dr Nisha NG was the former assistant director of ballistics at the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) in Thiruvananthapuram.

She submitted a representation for this research initiative on 27 April, 2023.

“In it, she requested to grant permission to publish research article on the forensic examination in crime 02/2012 of the Coastal Police Station of Neendakara in the Kollam district — the Enrica Lexie case,” an officer of the Home Department told South First on condition of anonymity.

The officer added, “She also requested necessary permission to refer to and make copies of the relevant pages of the case file for this purpose.”

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Permission, but with riders

Though a sanction has been given, the Home Department has laid out five conditions that must be “strictly complied” with by the researcher.

They are:

• The applicant shall submit an undertaking before the director of the FSL to maintain the confidentiality of data before visiting it to peruse files and collect data.
• She must redact sensitive information from the article, which may end up being sub-judice.
• She also must carefully avoid pertinent identifying details — like crime number, police station, names of people and places involved, countries involved, and name of the ship involved — from the article to avoid any future disputes that are likely to arise between the two countries consequent to the publication of the paper in any international journal and the responsibility of the contents of the article or consequences if any will solely be vested with the author alone.
• She has to submit a copy of the article to the director of the FSL before publication for scrutiny.
• The research paper shall be published without making any reference to the relations between the two countries or in a manner contrary to India’s foreign policy.

Though South First contacted Nisha for further details she refused to comment.

However, she acknowledged that she had approached the government for permission to carry out the study.

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The case so far

More than the death of the fishermen, this case had gone to the core of issues of jurisdiction over vessels on the high seas.

While Italy claimed exclusive jurisdiction as the flag state and claimed functional immunity for its marines as they were acting to protect Italian interests, India claimed jurisdiction as the flag state of St Antony and the victim state in the incident.

The case, which was heard by international bodies like the Permanent Court of Arbitration and the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, came to a closure in India in 2021.

This followed the Supreme Court of India quashing all criminal proceedings against Massimiliano Lattore and Salvatore Girone, the two Italian mariners involved in the firing incident.

The court took such a decision after Italy assured to conduct a criminal trial of their nationals before its domestic courts and the compensation of ₹10 crore to the bereaved families and the affected ones.

However, in 2022, a trial court in Rome acquitted the two marines.

Interestingly, in 2021, a ballistics case study of the Enrica Lexie incident was published in the International Journal of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering.

It was carried out by Diego Abbo, an independent researcher in Italy.