Pilot Boat Left Indian Sailors to Die in the Water, Says Officer

The two Indian sailors who went missing from the cargo vessel MV AGN Ragnar could have been pulled from the water alive within minutes of the drone strike that hit their ship in the Black Sea, according to the vessel's chief officer, who says a pilot boat sitting only a few hundred metres away fled the scene instead of rescuing them.

Rajat Kumar, the chief officer of MV AGN Ragnar and one of two Indian survivors of the 25 July attack, told The Probe that Ram Chandra Dubey and Deepak Kumar Gupta went into the water during the first of two drone strikes, and that a small pilot boat, which was waiting close by to collect the vessel's river pilot, was signalled to save them and turned away. "The biggest fault is with that pilot boat," he said. Rajat estimated the boat was about two cables from the ship, under half a kilometre, close enough to have reached the two men. 

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Where the ship was, and what happened

MV AGN Ragnar, a Palau-flagged general cargo ship, had loaded corn at Izmail, a Ukrainian port on the Danube, and was bound for Greece. It was moving down the river and out through the approach channel near Sulina, at the mouth of the Danube where the river meets the Black Sea, when it was struck. A local river pilot had guided the vessel toward open water and was preparing to disembark near the Romanian border. His pilot boat waited alongside to collect him.

According to Rajat, the first drone hit the cargo hold hatch cover as the pilot was about to step off. Dubey and Gupta, both Ordinary Seamen, went into the water. Whether they jumped to escape the fire or were thrown by the blast is disputed. Both families reject the account, first relayed to them, that the two sailors jumped.

A full 20 minutes passed before the second drone struck the vessel, s

The two Indian sailors who went missing from the cargo vessel MV AGN Ragnar could have been pulled from the water alive within minutes of the drone strike that hit their ship in the Black Sea, according to the vessel's chief officer, who says a pilot boat sitting only a few hundred metres away fled the scene instead of rescuing them.

Rajat Kumar, the chief officer of MV AGN Ragnar and one of two Indian survivors of the 25 July attack, told The Probe that Ram Chandra Dubey and Deepak Kumar Gupta went into the water during the first of two drone strikes, and that a small pilot boat, which was waiting close by to collect the vessel's river pilot, was signalled to save them and turned away. "The biggest fault is with that pilot boat," he said. Rajat estimated the boat was about two cables from the ship, under half a kilometre, close enough to have reached the two men. 

Also Read:  Missing Sailors: Family Moves Supreme Court After Every Door Shut

Where the ship was, and what happened

MV AGN Ragnar, a Palau-flagged general cargo ship, had loaded corn at Izmail, a Ukrainian port on the Danube, and was bound for Greece. It was moving down the river and out through the approach channel near Sulina, at the mouth of the Danube where the river meets the Black Sea, when it was struck. A local river pilot had guided the vessel toward open water and was preparing to disembark near the Romanian border. His pilot boat waited alongside to collect him.

According to Rajat, the first drone hit the cargo hold hatch cover as the pilot was about to step off. Dubey and Gupta, both Ordinary Seamen, went into the water. Whether they jumped to escape the fire or were thrown by the blast is disputed. Both families reject the account, first relayed to them, that the two sailors jumped.

A full 20 minutes passed before the second drone struck the vessel, setting off a fire and damaging the accommodation and bridge. In that interval, Rajat says, only one strike had taken place and the pilot boat was under no threat, because a pilot boat carries nothing that a drone campaign against cargo would be aimed at. The crew signalled to the boat by VHF radio and by hand that two of their men were in the water. The boat did not stop. It left without even collecting the pilot it had come for. The crew deployed a man overboard life buoy and gave the standard man overboard signals, but by the time a rescue craft reached them, roughly 40 to 45 minutes had passed, and the two men were no longer visible.

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A second official account, from Ukraine's Navy

A document obtained by The Probe now provides a second official account of the search for the two missing sailors, independent of the Romanian agency that has so far been the main source.

The letter, dated 28 July 2026, is from the 18th Maritime Guard Detachment of the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine, based in Izmail, and is signed by its acting commander, Captain 1st rank Denys Zakharchuk. It replies to a query dated 27 July from Marinar Agent Service, the local shipping agent at Izmail. 

The letter confirms that after MV AGN Ragnar sustained damage, a crew of seven and one pilot who were aboard were evacuated by an 18th detachment craft and taken ashore for medical treatment. It states that search and rescue for the two missing crew was carried out in the approach channel area by a Maritime Guard ship, two Naval Forces boats and one boat of the 17th Border Detachment. It records that the search was terminated on the order of the Naval Forces command because of an air threat, and that operations are currently suspended due to stormy weather, with Navy patrols surveying the coastline. It adds that Romania's Coast Guard was informed.

That crew count, seven plus one pilot evacuated with two missing, matches the account Rajat gave The Probe. It is also the first documentary confirmation, from an on-the-water Ukrainian source, that the two sailors were searched for and not found.

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Two searches, two reasons for stopping

On the Romanian side, the search was run by ARSVOM, the Romanian Agency for Saving Human Life at Sea. The Probe spoke to Daniel Nasiescu, ARSVOM's Director of Operations, whose position is listed in the agency's approved organisational chart under the title Director Exploatare. He said ARSVOM carried out a search and rescue operation on 26 July, running from about 8 in the morning to 8 in the evening, about 12 hours, covering the area from Sulina to St. George, further south along the Romanian coast. The operation found no one.

Nasiescu told The Probe the search had been called off and could only resume if Romania's Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre, MRCC Constanța, issued fresh orders, something he indicated would require pressure through diplomatic channels from India. He also said, directly, that media reports claiming the two seafarers had been rescued were false.

So two separate national efforts searched the same stretch of the Black Sea, and both stopped, for different stated reasons. Ukraine's Navy halted its operation because of an air threat and then stormy weather. Romania's agency ended its 12-hour search for want of fresh MRCC orders. On neither side of the border did anyone find the two men, alive or dead. MV AGN Ragnar was the third commercial vessel carrying Indian crew to be attacked in the Black Sea within roughly a week.

The rescue claim that does not hold up

Against these two official accounts stands a very different claim. On 27 July, the maritime trade publication TradeWinds reported, citing the security firm Ambrey Analytics, that the two crew initially reported missing had jumped into the water to escape the fire and were rescued with minor injuries, with the Romanian Coast Guard assisting.

On 30 July, Ambrey repeated the claim directly to Deepak Gupta's family in writing, again sourced to Lloyd's List, stating that two crew who jumped into the sea were subsequently rescued. Ambrey said it could not confirm the identities of those rescued.

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

If they were rescued, where are they?

The contradiction leaves a stark question at the centre of the case. Two searches found no bodies. If the two men are neither in the Black Sea nor recovered from it, and if there is any truth to the account that someone pulled two people from the water near the Romanian border, then those two people are somewhere, and no Indian authority has verified where.

One possibility the family has weighed is that the two men, if rescued near or across the Romanian maritime boundary, could have been taken into custody by Romanian authorities, questioned over an unauthorised entry, and are yet to be identified as the missing Indian crew. If that were the case, ordinary process would see them released after interrogation, and a single official inquiry by the Indian mission in Bucharest to the Romanian Coast Guard and ARSVOM, checking hospitals, port authority care and immigration custody, could settle it. The family says no such verification has been done.

A darker fear, which the family has voiced, is that two young seafarers pulled from the water in a live conflict zone could be held or put to some other use, including questioning about the vessel's movements. The Probe cannot verify this, and there is no evidence for it beyond the family's fear and the unexplained gap between the rescue claim and the official record. The gap is real: a claim that two men were saved, two official accounts that no one was found, and no body recovered on either side of the Black Sea.

Families moving from pillar to post

While the two accounts remain unreconciled, the families of the missing sailors have spent more than a week trying to force some arm of the state to take ownership of the case.

Deepak Gupta's brother, Sandeep Kumar Gupta, wrote to the Embassy of India in Bucharest, the Embassy of India in Kyiv, the MEA and the Directorate General of Shipping. The Bucharest mission, he says, forwarded his request to Kyiv, which would assist "in due course of time." The Kyiv emergency helpline went unanswered for more than 18 hours. Each mission, the family says, treated the case as the other's responsibility. On 31 July, Sandeep filed a writ petition in the Supreme Court under Article 32, seeking an order directing the Union of India to press for the search to resume. The matter came before the Chief Justice's bench and was listed for hearing on Monday.

Ram Chandra Dubey's family has pursued a parallel track. Praveen Patel, the Lok Sabha member for Phulpur in Prayagraj, wrote on 29 July to the Romanian embassy, the Ukrainian embassy, the Minister of External Affairs and the Minister of State for External Affairs, asking that Romanian and Ukrainian maritime agencies intensify the search and that a direct line be opened to the family. On 31 July, Manoj Tiwari, the member for North-East Delhi, forwarded the family's request to the External Affairs Minister. The manning agency that recruited the two seafarers, Dwelloship Management, sent its first written confirmation of the incident on 28 July, more than 60 hours after the attack.

What the record now shows

Taken together, the documents assembled around the MV AGN Ragnar case describe a search that was real but brief, halted on each side of the Black Sea for its own reasons, and a rescue claim that the searchers themselves reject. The Ukrainian Navy's letter and ARSVOM's account agree on the essential point. Two members of the crew went into the Black Sea near Sulina and were not found. The Ambrey account says they were saved. Both cannot be true, and the difference between them is the difference between a search that must continue and two men who may already be somewhere on land, uncounted.

For the families, that difference is everything. They have a court date on Monday, letters from two members of Parliament, a petition before the Chief Justice, and still no confirmed word on whether Ram Chandra Dubey and Deepak Kumar Gupta are alive. What they do not have, more than a week after MV AGN Ragnar was struck in the Black Sea, is a single official answer to the only question that matters: where are the two sailors.