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

"My brother called home on Friday, the 24th. The attack happened the very next day, and nobody told us anything on the 25th," said Seemakshi, sister of Ram Chandra Dubey, one of two missing sailors still unaccounted for after the merchant vessel MV AGN Ragnar came under attack off Ukraine's coast.

Dubey, an Ordinary Seaman, and fellow crew member Deepak Kumar Gupta have been missing since Saturday, July 25, after the Palau-flagged cargo ship was struck by suspected Russian drones while outbound through the Bystre Channel, near the Danube's mouth into the Black Sea, on a voyage from Ukraine toward Istanbul. Two other Indian crew members were confirmed safe soon after. 

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Family Of Missing Sailor Says They Were Left In The Dark

According to Seemakshi, the family's only contact in the first 24 hours after the attack came not from the government or the company that employed her brother, but from a stranger. "We got a call from a private person on the 26th, around 1.30 pm. He told us his name is Prashant, and that my brother is missing. He later called back to complain that too many people were calling him, and asked why we had shared his number. You tell me — if a family member is missing, would we not call the only person who reached out to us? We don't know the background of this person. But we didn't get a single call from the company that hired my brother, or from the Indian Embassy," she said. 

The family says it remains anxious and unaware of what to do next, more than 48 hours after the two men went missing following the attack. 

Devendra Pratap Singh, a friend of Dubey's from the same village, had raised an alarm publicly, posting on social media appealing to the government to accelerate search and rescue operations for the missing sailors. Singh says he has been trying to fill the information gap left by official channels. "Information is very limited right now. I am trying my best to coordinate whatever details I can find and pass them on to the family," he said.

The Recruitment Agency Responds

The Probe reached out to Dwelloship Management Private Limited, the Noida-based recruitment agency that hired the two missing sailors. Managing Director Sushant Rajora confirmed both men were recruited by his company as Ordinary Seamen, and that a third Dwelloship-recruited crew member aboard the vessel, Chief Officer Rajat Kumar, is safe and currently hospitalised.

"There were nine people onboard the ship. Four were Indian — two are missing, one is injured, and the fourth was recruited through a different agency, so I don't have his details. The captain is from Azerbaijan; he is also injured," Rajora said.

Rajora disputed the idea that families had been left with no information from his end. "I am in touch with both the families of the missing sailors. I am passing on whatever information I am able to find," he said — an account that stands in direct contrast to Seemakshi's description of receiving no contact from the company at all.

Rajora added that he is in touch with the ship's registered owner, Neva Shipping Corp, with AGN Uluslararasi Tasimacilik listed as its commercial and ISM manager. Rajora explained that the two missing sailors had been earning $550 a month when they joined roughly nine months ago, a wage that was raised to $910 a month by the Istanbul-based owner three to four months into their contract. Dwelloship, he said, currently has around 130 to 140 sailors placed globally.

Rajora also relayed an account from the third surviving Indian crew member: that Dubey and Gupta jumped into the water during the attack. He said he believed the ship was carrying grain, though he was not certain.

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A Corridor The Government Has Flagged As Dangerous

The Embassy of India in Kyiv, in a statement posted on July 26, said: "Embassy of India in Ukraine is closely monitoring the situation following the incident involving MV AGN Ragnar which was struck at the Port of Odesa, on 25 July. Four Indian nationals were on board the vessel. As per the latest information, two have been confirmed safe, and information is awaited regarding the other two nationals. Search and rescue operations are underway. The Embassy is in constant touch with the concerned authorities." The embassy listed emergency consular contacts but gave no names, no cause for the strike, and no timeline for when the families of the missing sailors might expect further news.

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The Third Attack In A Week

AGN Ragnar is not an isolated case. It is the third attack on a commercial vessel with Indian crew members in the Black Sea corridor within roughly a week. On July 18, MV Omorfi was attacked while transiting Russian territorial waters; it had 10 crew members onboard, three of them Indian, and one Indian sailor was killed. A day later, on July 19, MV Golden Leo — departing Odesa with 17 crew, including five Indians — was hit by suspected Russian missiles, killing four Indian sailors and critically injuring a fifth. Together, these three attacks — on MV Omorfi, MV Golden Leo, and MV AGN Ragnar — have all left Indian sailors dead, injured, or missing, all within a single week.

The pattern connecting the three vessels is stark: all three were old, small, foreign-flagged cargo ships, cheaply insured and willing to run a route that larger, better-resourced shipping companies have increasingly abandoned. For the sailors aboard them, recruited through small agencies, paid modestly, and sent into a war zone that their own government had flagged as high-risk - the human cost of keeping this corridor open is now being counted in missing sailors and grieving families, not shipping delays.

India Sends The World Its Sailors — But Not Always Its Protection

India supplies more than 12% of the world's seafaring workforce and ranks second globally, behind only the Philippines, with close to 3.2 lakh registered seafarers as of last year, a number that has nearly tripled in a decade. It is this scale that all but guarantees Indian names will appear whenever a merchant vessel is hit anywhere in the world, from the Red Sea to the Black Sea.

Indian seafarers crew the ships that move the world's grain, oil and cargo. When those ships come under attack on the high seas, far from any Indian port or embassy, it is their families, not the companies or the state, who are left waiting by the phone for a stranger to call with news no one official is willing to deliver.