cows smuggled in a tanker ~ and stowaway in a washing machine

The Government has put on alert customs officials at all international airports and land and sea borders to further intensify measures to check gold smuggling, which it suspects could rise during the ongoing festive season. The move comes following a three-fold jump in the cases of ‘gold smuggling’ since the beginning of this fiscal compared to approximately the same period last year.

Smuggling is the illegal transportation of objects (and sometimes people too !) across varied places especially borders of a State (Country).  There are various motives, almost all illegal and banned in civil society.  Stowaway is different – this refers to a person who secretly boards a vehicle, such as an aircraft, bus, ship, cargo truck or train, to travel without paying and without being detected.  According to IMO, the Convention on Facilitation of International Maritime Traffic, 1965, as amended,  define stowaway as "A person who is secreted on a ship, or in cargo which is subsequently loaded on the ship, without the consent of the shipowner or the Master or any other responsible person and who is detected on board the ship after it has departed from a port, or in the cargo while unloading it in the port of arrival, and is reported as a stowaway by the master to the appropriate authorities".

Now read this interesting report of smuggling (source : Times of India) :

In a bid to outsmart police, cattle smugglers have been devising newer ways of transport. The Shahjahanpur police in UP seized an oil tanker in which 25 cows were being transported. Police received a message  that an oil tanker had jumped a road barrier and struck a jeep. The police team immediately cordoned off the area and signalled to the driver to stop. The driver and cleaner of the tanker fled on seeing the police team.

The vehicle bore the name of Hindustan Petroleum Corporation. An inspection revealed an opening in the rear. Usually, tanker vehicles  vehicles only have a cap on the upper portion. When police opened the lid on the rear of the vehicle, they found 25 cows inside which were later taken to a veterinary hospital. SP Rakesh Chandra Sahu of Shahjahanpur told TOI, “The cattle smugglers had created an opening in the rear of the tanker through which they stuffed the cows in after injecting them with sedatives. We have lodged an FIR under the Prevention of Cow Slaughter Act against unidentified people. We are trying to trace the owner of the tanker’.

Now there is this news on ‘stowaway’ caught trying to sneak across the border in a …………….. (as reported in Daily Mail) ….

Stowaways on board vessel, inside containers, in little space on aircraft – nothing new …. Now a man was discovered in the large appliance inside a U-Haul in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas …. It was inside a washing machine and - a cardboard box held four other undocumented immigrants – all trying to cross the Mexican border into US were detained by U.S. border patrol in Falfurrias, Texas. The group was travelling in the back of a U-Haul. Also detained were the man behind the wheel and his female passenger.

Meanwhile, high-ranking U.S. Senate Democrats last week called on the Obama administration to reverse its new policy of detaining Central American immigrant families, warning it could be damaging to the young children being housed in the facilities. Many of the migrants are fleeing El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, where gang violence, drugs and human trafficking are rampant.

Strange are the ways of people !!

With regards – S. Sampathkumar.

21^st Oct 2014.