A Sri Lankan Tamil family of four, including two children, sailed to India’s southern coast in Tamil Nadu and landed at the Rameswaram district on Friday in an attempt to escape hardships caused by the island country’s worst-ever economic crisis, thus making it the second known incident in recent weeks where Sri Lankans have refuge in India because of the ongoing crisis back home.

Local fishermen in Tamil Nadu’s Rameswaram district alerted cops when they sighted the boat of the family.

“They are being shifted to the Mandapam Camp. Further steps will be decided after the state intelligence and central agencies complete their procedures,” a local official was quoted as saying by The Indian Express.

The family, which hails from the northern district of Jaffna, sailed to the shore in Tamil Nadu on a fiber boat. They are believed to be part of a wider group of which at least 15 people were reportedly taken into custody by the Sri Lankan Navy when they started their sail, the report said, citing a source in Mannar, a northern district in Sri Lanka.

Earlier, around 16 Sri Lankans reached Rameswaram in the last month in two boats, all from Mannar, south of Jaffna, for the same reason. Following the incident, the Sri Lankan Navy had stepped up patrolling at sea.

Indian authorities are anticipating more refugees from the crisis-hit Sri Lanka which has been facing a shortage of food, fuel, and other essentials. Earlier during the civil war in Sri Lanka, the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, which shares a common cultural and linguistic identity with Sri Lankan Tamils, had sheltered thousands of refugees.

Earlier on Thursday, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin dialed External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and offered to send essential supplies to Sri Lankan Tamil in the north.

In a statement released by the Tamil Nadu government, it said the state government was prepared to supply essential commodities such as rice, cereals, and life-saving drugs by ship from Thoothukudi to benefit Tamils in eastern and northern provinces of Sri Lanka, and in Colombo and Jaffna and hill-country Tamils.

 (SAM)