An Indo-Thai fishing company says police in the Indian state of West Bengal have refused to release 71 Thai fishermen from their custody, even after a court in Calcutta passed an order tor release them in December. The police say they have not yet received the orders from the court. The Thai fishermen have been in jail since they were arrested from a river island South of Calcutta in June. One of the fishermen died in jail, allegedly because of police torture. From Calutta, Subir Bhaumik sent us this report.

A spokesman of the Indo-Thai fishing company, Swan Fisheries, told journalists that they have failed to secure the release of 71 Thai fishermen, despite an order by a Calcutta court 20 days ago to free them immediately. The spokesman said that they have approached the West Bengal police with the court order several times since it was passed, but the police officials refused to release the fishermen, saying that they had not yet received a copy of the court order.

The spokesman of the Swan Fisheries alleged that the police were deliberately trying to be difficult, because they want to hold the fishermen in their custody. He said the Thai fishermen have been regularly tortured ever since their arrest in June and one of them had died last month.

The Bengal police say that these fishermen were actually carrying weapons in their trawlers and suspect that they were linked with those smuggling weapons in the Bay of Bengal; but the Swan Fisheries spokesman dismissed the charges as completely baseless. He said the three trawlers when they were caught on the night of June the twenty seventh were actually flying Indian flags.

When asked why the trawlers had trespassed so far inland, right into the Sundarbans Delta, the fishing company spokesman said that they had been forced to take shelter in the river island of Matla due to a storm. 57 of the Thai fishermen who were arrested were let off last month, but the remaining 71 are still in a jail in Bengal's southern district of Midnapore.