COLOMBO, July 3: A magistrate has remanded in custody 254 Pakistani men and five Sri Lankans in connection with a major people smuggling racket, police said Thursday.

The Pakistanis were taken before a magistrate in Tangalle, 200 kilometres south of Colombo on Wednesday night and remanded for two weeks, a police official said.

“We have a problem of communicating with the suspects as they don’t understand the local language or English,” a police official in Tangalle said by telephone.

He said the Pakistan High Commission in Colombo sent an interpreter to communicate with the suspects and statements of only eight had been recorded by midnight Wednesday.

Initially, the authorities believed they had arrested 256 Pakistani men and three Sri Lankans who helped them to board a foreign-owned ship that was to take them illegally to Europe, possibly Italy.

However, later investigations showed the number of Pakistanis was 254 and that five Sri Lankans were directly engaged in the smuggling.

The seven-man crew cargo vessel, identified as the MV Invincible, was brought and anchored near the southern port of Galle by Wednesday, a day after the navy and the police seized it with the would-be immigrants.

The authorities believed the crew was Russian and Georgian and they were facing a criminal investigation.

A senior police official said the Pakistanis had been flown to Sri Lanka from Karachi legitimately and then driven to the island’s south to board the ship which had been anchored off the coast. —AFP