Plea in Sri Lanka Supreme Court on cargo ship fire impact

Petitioners seek a probe into incident.

Environmentalists and fisher groups in Sri Lanka on Friday petitioned the Supreme Court seeking a probe into how a container ship bearing dangerous chemicals and plastic material — that burned off the coast releasing massive debris — was allowed into the island nation’s territorial waters. Their Fundamental Rights petition follows a nearly two week-long battle by the Sri Lankan Navy, with Dutch salvage experts and the Indian Coast Guard, to douse the flames onboard the Singapore-registered vessel, MV X-Press Pearl, that was anchored about 9.5 nautical miles off the Colombo port. After the fire was extinguished on Tuesday, the vessel has been slowly sinking into the Indian Ocean, off the Sri Lankan coast, heightening fears of a possible oil spill that authorities said they were preparing to handle. Meanwhile, the prolonged fire on the vessel led to large deposits of plastic pellets along the island nation’s coastline, where several marine organisms were also found dead. Experts have termed the development the country’s “worst ecological disaster”.