Missing Sailors: One Story for the Public, Another for the Court

On 4 August, a spokesperson for the Ministry of External Affairs told a briefing in New Delhi that the government was making all efforts to trace two Indian sailors missing in the Black Sea, and that search and rescue operations were being carried out as directed by the Supreme Court. Three days later, in a written report placed before that same Supreme Court, the government said something that did not match. The search, it stated, had been suspended.

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The public message: making all efforts

At the ministry's briefing on 4 August, spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal confirmed that four Indian nationals had been aboard MV AGN Ragnar when it was attacked off the Ukrainian port of Odesa on 25 July. Two were safe, he said, and two still missing. Search and rescue operations were being carried out in coordination with the authorities in Ukraine and Romania, and had been undertaken, in his words, as directed by the Supreme Court. The government was making all efforts to trace the two missing sailors, he added, and was in touch with their families and providing all possible assistance.

The same message had run through the government's public account from the beginning. On 26 July, the Embassy of India in Ukraine said on X that it was closely monitoring the situation, that two of the four Indians were confirmed safe, and that search and rescue operations were underway. Taken together, the public statements describe a search that is active and continuing.

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What the government told the Supreme Court

The government's own report to the Supreme Court describes something else. In a brief note cum action taken report filed for the hearing on 7 August, the union government stated that despite exhaustive efforts by the Ukrainian authorities, the Romanian Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre and the Romanian Coast Guard, the two sailors could not be located, and that search operations presently remain suspended pending the receipt of fresh information.

The report describes how the search was run. On the Ukrainian side, the 18th Maritime Guard Detachment of the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine searched alongside the Ukrainian Naval Force, then discontinued the operation because of a continuing aerial threat, and could not resume because of stormy weather.

On the Romanian side, the Romanian Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre (MRCC Constanta) conducted a search operation but the missing seafarers could not be located. 

What is conspicuously absent from both the versions the government has offered is the one detail that matters most: when the search and rescue operations were actually conducted, by either the Ukrainian or the Romanian authorities. The Probe had reported earlier that the Ukrainian authorities searched on 25 July, the day of the incident, and that the Romanian authorities searched on 26 July. The Probe also holds a written response from the Romanian authorities confirming that after 26 July, no further search and rescue was conducted.

The government's reply does confirm one thing: that the search and rescue was suspended. The truth is that it was suspended on 26 July itself. Even as the Ministry of External Affairs said in its statement on 4 August that search and rescue operations were being carried out, the search had in fact been called off on the 26th, more than a week earlier. There is further corroboration of this from India's Ambassador to Romania.

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What the ambassador told the family

The gap between the public message and the private reality is at its clearest in a recording of a call between the family and Indian officials on 6 August 2026, reviewed by The Probe. On the call, India's Ambassador to Romania tells the family plainly that the Romanian authorities searched, found no one, and stopped when it grew dark, and that they have not resumed since.

But the most revealing thing he says is not that the search had stopped. It is the condition he attaches to restarting it. The Romanian side, he tells the family, will act only if fresh information is provided to it, and until such information arrives, no search is being conducted. In his account, reviving the search depends on the family of the missing sailors producing something new for the authorities to work with, rather than on the state continuing to look. The responsibility is quietly turned around.

Sandeep Kumar Gupta, Deepak's elder brother, presses the point. After 26 July, he says on the call, no search was run at all, and the family has been given only verbal assurances on messaging apps, never anything in writing. The ambassador does not dispute the account. He describes his own meetings with the Romanian coast guard, navy and interior ministry, and with the mayor of Sulina, and raises the possibility, first suggested by an embassy official in Kyiv, that the men may have drifted toward the Romanian coast.

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

The men the search left behind

MV AGN Ragnar, a Palau-flagged merchant vessel, was struck while leaving Odesa on 25 July. Of the nine crew members and one pilot on board, four were Indian. Seven crew and the pilot were brought ashore. Two Indian sailors, both serving as ordinary seamen, went into the water and were not found: Deepak Kumar Gupta (26) from Bareilly in Uttar Pradesh, whose family originally comes from Siwan in Bihar, and Ram Chandra Dubey (23) from Prayagraj in Uttar Pradesh.

Two other Indian crew members, Vishesh Kumar and Rajat Kumar, were rescued. Rajat Kumar, the Chief Officer, was admitted to a hospital in Odesa with minor injuries. In an earlier account given to The Probe, Kumar said a pilot boat had been close enough to reach the two men and had been signalled to help, and that it fled the scene instead.  

The Black Sea has become a dangerous route for Indian seafarers. In an advisory issued on 26 July, the MEA itself noted that incidents involving commercial vessels in the region had risen since April, and had already cost five Indian lives. In less than a week, three commercial ships carrying Indian sailors were attacked in the Black Sea. On 18 July, MV Omorfi was struck, and one Indian sailor was killed. The next day, 19 July, MV Golden Leo was hit soon after leaving Odesa, killing four Indian sailors and critically injuring another. Six days later, on 25 July, MV AGN Ragnar was attacked off the same port, leaving two Indian sailors, Deepak Kumar Gupta and Ram Chandra Dubey, missing.

The families of both missing sailors say they wrote to the ministry and to the Indian embassies in Ukraine and Romania between 26 and 30 July, and received no substantive assurance. It was that silence that drove Deepak Kumar Gupta's family to the Supreme Court, with his elder brother, Sandeep Kumar Gupta, filing the petition.