An extreme example of athithi devo bhava (guest is God) — India’s slogan for attracting foreign tourists — was when a couple of years ago, the Karnataka government mistook two Somali pirates as foreigners who had lost their way at sea and extended them complete hospitality and ev-en sent them back to Somalia at government expense.
According to a senior Intelligence officer, the two pirates landed at Kumta — a coastal town near Gokarna on Karnataka-Goa border after drifting in the sea. The fishermen spotted them and handed them over to the local authorities. “For lack of information or sheer ignorance, the police and the local authorities extended all help and support to them, including board and lodging. Since language was a problem, they even took the help of some translators. Later, the two were sent to Bengaluru from where they were flew back to Somalia on government-paid tickets,” said the officer.
“Even now, though the MHA is pumping in hundreds of crores of rupees post-26/11 for beefing up coastal security, there remains only one police station which can register anti-piracy cases in the entire western coast of India stretching from Gujarat to Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu,” said the officer.