By Maha El Dahan, Praveen Paramasivam and Mohammed Atti
DINDIGUL, India/DUBAI/BASRA, Nov 10 (Reuters) – V. Pandiselvi, the mother of Indian sailor Naveen Kumar, has not heard from her son for more than six months, yet she still clings to hope that he will return, repeatedly listening to old voice notes with tears.
Kumar was one of six crew members assigned to two Iran‑linked cargo vessels last seen in Iranian waters in May before disappearing. The fate of the two ships remains unclear.
Since the US‑Israeli war on Iran began on 28 February, commercial ships have come under fire. Tehran attacks vessels to assert control over the Strait of Hormuz, while the US strikes Iran‑linked ships to enforce a blockade on Iranian ports.
The UN’s International Maritime Organization has confirmed 130 incidents – mainly attacks – in the region since the conflict began, with at least 25 seafarers killed.
“We cannot bear this pain,” Pandiselvi, 45, told Reuters from her one‑bedroom house in Dindigul, Tamil Nadu, struggling to keep her composure. “You don’t need anyone to tell you what a parent goes through if they lose a child. We appeal to everyone involved to please come forward and help us.”
Reuters spoke to shipping sources, Iraqi officials and families of missing sailors in Basra and Tamil Nadu to reveal the human cost of the Hormuz attacks.
The 23‑year‑old Kumar’s family took on considerable debt so he could complete a marine course and pursue his dream of working as a sailor. After finishing his training, he left for a six‑month crew contract that was supposed to be based in Dubai, but a week into the voyage he found himself in Iran, to his family’s dismay.
‘EVERY MINUTE IS AGONY’
Even before the war broke out three months later, Kumar’s family was desperately trying to repatriate him. Then came radio silence.
“My mental condition had deteriorated into madness, I sent desperate messages,” Pandiselvi said, adding that she sent him voice notes without reply to a number saved as “Naveen Mariner” with an anchor emoji. “A terrifying question mark hangs over his fate: Is he still on that ship, or has something terrible happened to him? It’s causing a lot of confusion. Every passing minute is agony,” she said.
Kumar had been deployed to the vessels Bridge 1 and Bridge 2, which disappeared around 9 May. The two ships were not on the IMO’s list of incidents.
Iraq said in May it was monitoring the disappearance of the two Bolivian‑flagged vessels. No distress signals were received, and Gulf ports requested information after communications with the crew were lost.
Khaled Saad al‑Thaalibi, head of the Iraqi maritime foundation in Basra, told Reuters that the latest available information indicated the vessels’ Automatic Identification System (AIS) transmitted their last known position approximately 8 nautical miles from Iran’s Kish Island on 9 May at 4:50 p.m. “We called the agent in Iran but he told us that he knew nothing about the incident and on the following day the Iranian search and rescue tried to look for the vessels but they found nothing,” Thaalibi said from his office in Basra. “We don’t know if the vessels sank or were confiscated by a country.”
The other missing crew members are three Iraqis, one Pakistani and another Indian.
Sources familiar with the matter said the vessels were involved in Iranian trade and were carrying steel.
NO ANSWERS
Haider Rahman al‑Mayahi, a 22‑year‑old Iraqi sailor, was among the crew, his brother Youssef Rahman said. “He left behind a one‑year‑old daughter and a father who suffered a stroke from the grief of his disappearance,” Youssef told Reuters, breaking down in tears.
Al‑Mayahi’s family travelled to Iran seeking answers. They located the vessel’s owner, an Iranian who told them he had no information on the ships. The family received conflicting theories: some shipping sources said the vessels may have been struck by the US and sunk immediately, while others speculated the crew had been detained by a Gulf state or Iran.
The Iranian agent who hired the Iraqi sailors did not respond to phone calls from Reuters.
Kumar’s family took out around 1.5 million Indian rupees (≈ $16 000) in loans for him to complete his maritime training course and is now struggling with the financial burden.
They contacted Lascar Marine, a Mumbai‑based agency that hired Kumar, initially receiving assurances he would return soon. People from the agency later told the family they had no information, and after that calls went unanswered, the family said. The agency did not reply to repeated calls from Reuters.
A government order dated 22 May, published on a website, showed India’s Seamen’s Employment Office withdrew Lascar Marine’s recruitment license and barred its past and present directors from the maritime business for five years, citing repeated failures to repatriate seafarers – including Kumar – or pay their wages. The director of the office did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Since the Iran war, the cost of hiring sailors has tripled, with many working only one journey as risks mount.
One Dubai‑based shipper told Reuters that a crew member may earn what they used to make in seven months in just two months and then opt to go home. A captain, the highest paid crew member on a vessel, could earn around $8,000–$13,000 a month before the conflict. Now they can earn three times that.
“They ask for three months’ pay per month but after seeing what a journey entails they sometimes quit after one trip,” the shipper said.
For Pandiselvi, the lure of good pay is now meaningless. “We worked tirelessly to secure our children’s careers and future,” she said. “Now, seeing everything that has happened, we are left wondering what our lives have come to.”
($1 = 94.5075 Indian rupees)
(Reporting by Maha El Dahan in Dubai, Praveen Paramsivam in Dindigul, India, Aref Mohammed and Mohammed Atti in Basra, Ahmed Rasheed in Baghdad; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)
