Missing Sailors: Family Moves Supreme Court After Every Door Shut

The family of one of two missing sailors from the MV AGN Ragnar has moved the Supreme Court of India, seeking urgent directions to force the government to resume a stalled search for their loved ones in the Black Sea. The writ petition, filed on Thursday by Sandeep Kumar Gupta, the elder brother of missing seafarer Deepak Kumar Gupta, came up before a bench led by the Chief Justice of India. Despite the plea's emphasis on extreme urgency, with the petitioner arguing that survival is measured in hours, the matter has been listed for hearing on Monday.

Deepak Kumar Gupta, an Ordinary Seaman aged 26, and his crewmate Ram Chandra Dubey have been missing since 25 July, when the Palau-flagged cargo vessel they were serving on was struck by drones near the Sulina river breakwater at the mouth of the Danube. Two other Indian crew members were rescued and are safe. The petition concerning the missing sailors was filed under Article 32 of the Constitution, seeking a writ of mandamus directing the Union of India to act.

Speaking to The Probe, Sandeep Kumar Gupta said the decision to approach the country's highest court was a last resort. "There was no other option left before me. All the doors had closed. That is why I decided to knock on the doors of the Supreme Court," he said.

Also Read:Missing Indian Sailors: How a System Failed Two Grieving Families

Why the Family Went to Court

The petition sets out, in careful detail, the family's account of what it describes as a complete failure of the state's machinery to protect an Indian citizen in peril abro

Missing Sailors: Family Moves Supreme Court After Every Door Shut

The family of one of two missing sailors from the MV AGN Ragnar has moved the Supreme Court of India, seeking urgent directions to force the government to resume a stalled search for their loved ones in the Black Sea. The writ petition, filed on Thursday by Sandeep Kumar Gupta, the elder brother of missing seafarer Deepak Kumar Gupta, came up before a bench led by the Chief Justice of India. Despite the plea's emphasis on extreme urgency, with the petitioner arguing that survival is measured in hours, the matter has been listed for hearing on Monday.

Deepak Kumar Gupta, an Ordinary Seaman aged 26, and his crewmate Ram Chandra Dubey have been missing since 25 July, when the Palau-flagged cargo vessel they were serving on was struck by drones near the Sulina river breakwater at the mouth of the Danube. Two other Indian crew members were rescued and are safe. The petition concerning the missing sailors was filed under Article 32 of the Constitution, seeking a writ of mandamus directing the Union of India to act.

Speaking to The Probe, Sandeep Kumar Gupta said the decision to approach the country's highest court was a last resort. "There was no other option left before me. All the doors had closed. That is why I decided to knock on the doors of the Supreme Court," he said.

Also Read:  Missing Indian Sailors: How a System Failed Two Grieving Families

Why the Family Went to Court

The petition sets out, in careful detail, the family's account of what it describes as a complete failure of the state's machinery to protect an Indian citizen in peril abroad. The core argument is constitutional: that the right to life under Article 21 "follows the citizen wherever he goes," and does not stand suspended when an Indian crosses the country's territorial waters.

At the heart of the case for the missing sailors lies a stark contradiction between two official accounts, neither of which, the petition says, has been verified by any arm of the Indian government.

On one side is the account of the Romanian Agency for Saving Human Life at Sea (ARSVOM), which conducted the only search. In a written communication annexed to the petition, ARSVOM confirmed that one of its search-and-rescue vessels searched the designated area from Sulina to St. George on 26 July, and that "despite all the efforts we have made, unfortunately, nobody was found." Crucially, ARSVOM added: "Since that day we have not received further instructions or orders from MRCC." The petition notes that this means the official search for the missing sailors "was thus conducted for less than ten hours and has stood halted since 26.07.2026."

On the other side is what the petition calls "credible maritime intelligence" pointing the other way. It records that TradeWinds, a maritime news publication, reported that two seafarers were rescued, and that the security firm Ambrey Analytics communicated to the family, in writing, that two crew members who jumped into the sea "were subsequently rescued" with minor injuries, with the Romanian Coast Guard assisting. Ambrey stated it could not confirm the identities of those rescued.

The petition frames the consequence of this contradiction with unusual clarity: "If the rescue reports are true, the Petitioner's brother may be alive, injured, and unidentified in a foreign facility today. If they are not, every hour without a resumed search extinguishes his chances of survival. In either event, immediate action by the Union of India is the only path to the truth."

Also Read:  Why Are Indian Sailors Dying in the Black Sea?

"The Family Has Knocked on Every Door"

A substantial part of the petition documents the family's own efforts to get information about the missing sailors, and the responses it received. According to the petition, Sandeep wrote repeatedly to the Embassy of India at Bucharest, the Embassy of India at Kyiv, the Ministry of External Affairs, the External Affairs Minister, the Directorate General of Shipping, and the recruiting agency.

The petition states that the Embassy at Bucharest, by email dated 27 July, "merely forwarded the request to the Embassy at Kyiv stating that the latter would assist 'in due course of time'." It records that the emergency helpline of the Embassy at Kyiv "went unanswered for over 18 hours," and that "each mission has treated the matter as falling within the other's jurisdiction."

This jurisdictional buck-passing forms one of the petition's central legal grounds. It argues that where "two missions of the same sovereign each disclaim responsibility, the responsibility of the Union of India as a whole stands established, not diminished." The petition invokes the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, 1963, under which consular functions include protecting the interests of a country's nationals, arguing that "jurisdictional convenience of the State's own instrumentalities cannot defeat the fundamental rights of the citizen."

For Sandeep, this experience is the reason the family had no choice but to litigate. The petition records that the recruiting agency "took more than 60 hours to even confirm the incident in writing to the family." When The Probe first reported on the case, the family described receiving no meaningful information from the company or the state, only a single call, on 26 July, from a person who would not identify his company.

Also Read:  Missing Sailors: Family Says No Word From Govt, Ship Owner

What the Petition Asks For

Notably, the petition is careful about what it does not seek. "The Petitioner does not ask this Hon'ble Court to conduct foreign relations," it states. "He asks only that the Union of India be directed to do what it alone can do and what it is already obliged to do."

The reliefs sought on behalf of the missing sailors are specific and practical. The petition asks the Court to direct the Union of India to take up, at the highest diplomatic level with Romania, Ukraine, and the flag state of Palau, the immediate resumption and intensification of search-and-rescue operations in the Sulina and Danube-mouth sector of the Black Sea, including a reissuance of search orders by Romania's rescue coordination centre based on "updated ocean drift modeling."

It also seeks a direction to verify, with the Romanian Coast Guard and ARSVOM, whether any rescued or recovered persons matching the description of the missing sailors are in Romanian medical facilities, port authority care, or immigration custody, a verification the petition says "requires nothing more than one official inquiry by the Indian mission at Bucharest."

Further, the petition asks the Court to direct the appointment of "a single nodal officer of appropriate seniority" in the Ministry of External Affairs, to serve as the accountable point of contact for the case and to provide daily written updates to the family until the seafarer is traced. An accompanying application for interim relief seeks that the Bucharest mission be directed to make the verification inquiry within 24 hours.

A Question of Accountability

The petition is unsparing in its assessment of the recruiting agency's conduct, and of the wider system that placed the missing sailors on the vessel. It notes that the agency, on 29 July, asserted that the search operation was "still ongoing" by the Ukrainian and Romanian coast guards, "an assertion directly contradicted by ARSVOM's written statement that the search was halted on 26.07.2026 itself." It also records that the agency did not answer the family's specific questions, including on a discrepancy between the companies named in the seafarer's contract and a third entity named by Ambrey as the vessel's technical manager.

The petition places the Directorate General of Shipping's statutory role at the centre of this accountability question. It argues that the Directorate exercises control over recruiting agencies under the Merchant Shipping Act, 1958, "precisely so that Indian seafarers and their families are not left remediless when a casualty occurs on a foreign flag vessel."

Waiting Until Monday

For the family of the missing sailors, the listing of the matter for Monday is a source of anguish. The petition's own language stresses that "the matter is of the utmost urgency and irreparable harm will be caused if it is not listed and heard immediately, as the window for a successful search and rescue operation, or for tracing a rescued survivor, closes with each passing day."

Sandeep, for his part, is clear about why he has pursued this at all. "The petition is filed solely to save the life of his brother," the document states, recording that the petitioner "has no personal, private, or oblique motive." When The Probe spoke to him, that was the note he returned to: a brother who was due home, a family that has run from pillar to post, and a search that, on the official record, has not moved since 26 July.

The two missing sailors remain unaccounted for. Whether they are somewhere in the water, somewhere on a foreign shore, or in a hospital bed no one has yet checked, is a question that, for now, only the Union of India can answer. The family hopes the Supreme Court, on Monday, will compel it to try.