More than six months after her son disappeared aboard two Iran-linked cargo vessels, V. Pandiselvi continues to replay his old voice messages, hoping the 23-year-old Indian sailor will somehow return home. Naveen Kumar was among six crew members assigned to the vessels Bridge 1 and Bridge 2, which were last detected in Iranian waters on May 9 and have since vanished without explanation.
Their disappearance is among the unresolved cases highlighting the human cost of attacks on commercial shipping since the US-Israeli war on Iran began on February 28. According to the United Nations’ International Maritime Organization (IMO), 130 incidents, mainly attacks on vessels, have been recorded in the region since the conflict started, resulting in the deaths of at least 25 seafarers.
In a report published on Tuesday, Reuters examined the disappearances and their impact on the families of missing sailors in Iraq’s Basra and India’s Tamil Nadu state, speaking to shipping sources, Iraqi officials and relatives.
“We cannot bear this pain,” Pandiselvi, 45, told Reuters from her one-bedroom home in Dindigul, southern India. “You don’t need anyone to tell you what a parent would go through if they were to lose their child. We appeal to everyone involved to please come forward and help us.”
Kumar had left home for what his family understood would be a six-month maritime employment contract based in Dubai. However, within a week, he found himself in Iran, causing alarm among his relatives, who had borrowed heavily to finance his maritime training and help him pursue a career at sea. Even before the war began, the family had been trying to arrange his return. Communications eventually stopped altogether.
“My mental condition had deteriorated into madness, I sent desperate messages,” Pandiselvi told Reuters, describing how she continued sending voice messages to a telephone number saved under her son’s name, without receiving any replies.
The two vessels were flying the Bolivian flag and were not included in the IMO’s list of reported incidents. Iraq said in May that it was monitoring their disappearance after Gulf ports requested information following the loss of contact with their crews. No distress signals were received.
Khaled Saad al-Thaalibi, head of the Iraqi maritime foundation in Basra, told Reuters that the vessels’ Automatic Identification System had transmitted their last known position approximately eight nautical miles from Iran’s Kish Island at 4.50 pm on May 9.
“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,” he said.
“We don’t know if the vessels sunk or were confiscated by a country.”
The missing crew comprised three Iraqis, two Indians and one Pakistani. Sources familiar with the matter told Reuters that the vessels were involved in Iranian trade and carrying steel. Their fate remains unknown, with no confirmed account of what happened after their last recorded transmission.
Among the missing Iraqis was 22-year-old sailor Haider Rahman al-Mayahi. His brother, Youssef Rahman, told Reuters that he had left behind a one-year-old daughter and a father who suffered a stroke following his disappearance. His family travelled to Iran in search of information and located the vessels’ owner, whom they identified as an Iranian national, but were told that he had no information about the ships.
Families have received conflicting accounts of the disappearance. Some shipping sources suggested that the vessels might have been struck by US forces and sunk, while others speculated that the crews had been detained by Iran or a Gulf state. None of these explanations has been confirmed.
Kumar’s family is also struggling with the financial consequences of his disappearance. They borrowed approximately 1.5 million Indian rupees ($16,000) to finance his maritime training. Their attempts to obtain assistance from Mumbai-based recruitment agency Lascar Marine initially brought assurances that he would return, but the family said agency representatives later claimed to have no information. Subsequent calls went unanswered.
An order dated May 22 and published on an Indian government website showed that the Seamen’s Employment Office had withdrawn Lascar Marine Services’ recruitment licence and barred its former and current directors from maritime business for five years. The decision cited repeated failures to repatriate seafarers, including Kumar, or pay their wages.
The financial risks of maritime employment have also increased since the conflict began. A Dubai-based shipper told Reuters that the cost of hiring seafarers had tripled as companies offered substantially higher wages to attract crews willing to undertake dangerous voyages. Captains, who previously earned between $8,000 and $13,000 a month, could now receive three times those amounts.
However, some sailors have opted to return home after completing a single voyage, despite the higher earnings.
For Pandiselvi, the prospect of financial reward has become irrelevant as she waits for news of her son.
“We worked tirelessly to secure our children’s careers and future,” she told Reuters. “Now, seeing everything that has happened, we are left wondering what our lives have come to.”
