discharging their official duties. This reasoning falls flat as the present transaction between the Italian marines and the Italian government is a quintessential example of a commercial contract between the two parties. Therefore, the Marines were on a commercial vessel and not on a “government non-commercial purpose” ship, a perquisite to discern between commercial services from that of state’s sovereign functions.
The panacea that could have been adopted in such a dispute was to let India try the matter as per its criminal jurisdiction, considering that the event did happen in its contiguous zone and the victims were in fact Indian fishermen. The Award perorates to be a bad precedent as it unduly inclines towards Italy when clearly there is no rationale which stands in its favour. The Award invades the rights of the fishermen and their families. It is clear from the above that PCA has exceeded in its jurisdiction by referring the issue of immunity as ‘incidental’ to the case. Then again, MV Enrica Lexie was that of commercial nature which specifies that the Italian marines were certainly not on any sovereign state duty to be eligible for functional immunity. This Award will act as an excuse for states to come up with their own specific laws intentionally making the military or paramilitary officials on a commercial vessel, functionally immune and further using them for state’s adventurous purposes. Albeit Italy is bound to pay compensation to India, the pillars on which the Award stands are tenuous which makes it perverse in law.