The Coast Guard Friday nabbed 16 people while allegedly stealing valuable scrap from an abandoned ship, stranded nearly nine nautical miles off the Goa coast, an official said.
The arrests were carried out after a raid on the 274-meter-long crude iron tanker, which was abandoned by its owners more than a year back.
"We noticed movement on the abandoned tanker during a sortie today. When we raided the tanker, we found 16 people on it who were stripping the ship off valuables," a Coast Guard official said.
