RAMESWARAM: The Q-branch of the Tamil Nadu police arrested a Sri Lankan Tamil refugee for entering Rameswaram island without proper travel papers near Dhnaushkodi near here in the early hours of Monday.
Sources said that one Arun Raj (24) of Chettikulam in Vavuniya in northern Sri Lanka was seen walking in the shallow waters from Arichalmunai towards Dhanushkodi, when Q-branch police, on a tip-off, rushed to the spot and took him into custody for questioning.
Preliminary enquiries revealed that Arun Raj's parents had come to Tamil Nadu with his parents as refugees in early 1990 and had been staying in the Paramathivelur camp for Sri Lankan Tamil refugees.
Arun Raj was born in that camp in 1996 but after a couple of years on his father's untimely demise, his mother married another person from Puducherry. Arun Raj was left with his grandmother at the Paramathivelur camp and his mother and foster father migrated to Saudi Arabia in search of a job, sources said.
Though Arun Raj grew up in that refugee camp, after some years he began to dislike that life and with the help of UNHCR went back to Sri Lanka in November 2018, sources said. Arun Raj then stayed at his paternal uncle's house in Chettikulam, Vavuniya, and was doing odd jobs like painting to eke out a living as a daily-wage earner, sources said.
With no worthwhile income, Arun Raj was soon disenchanted with living in Vavuniya and on the suggestion of a friend decided to come back to Tamil Nadu to help make both ends meet. Arun Raj, apparently paid Rs.15,000 to a boatman to illegally ferry him across the Palk Straits to Dhanushkodi waters, sources said.
He reached Arichalmunai and was walking across to Dhanushkodi when Q-branch police arrested him, sources said, adding, further investigations were on.
