The Mercy Mission ship MV Captain Ali’s 60 days saga came to an end as it set sail on Sunday to Kolkata, where it has been sold.
The ship had brought 884 tonnes of relief material including medicines, collected from all over Europe, for Sri Lankan Tamils. It set sail from UK in April and was escorted out of Sri Lankan waters by the Lankan navy on June 9 when it tried entering Colombo port. The ship has been anchored in international waters near the Chennai port ever since.
Only on July 2, it was allowed to dock at Chennai port after which its cargo began to be transferred to another ship on July 3.
Now, the relief material brought by it has been transferred into 27 containers and loaded into the ship Cape Colorado, which will set sail for Colombo on Monday morning and reach Colombo on July 8.
The two passengers in the ship - Kristjan Guðmundsson of Iceland and Uthayanan Thavarajasingam of UK- had been stranded as Chennai immigration officials refused to give them transit visas to enable them to take flights to their home countries. On Friday, they appealed to chief minister Karunanidhi to intervene in their case.
On Sunday, they got relief as they were granted transit visas after 6 am. (ENS)
