Now Reading: All agencies working day and night for hijacked Indian seafarers: Sonowal
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All agencies working day and night for hijacked Indian seafarers: Sonowal
All agencies working day and night for hijacked Indian seafarers: Sonowal
Shipping Minister Sarbananda Sonowal said all concerned agencies are working day and night to ensure the safety of 22 Indian seafarers on two commercial vessels hijacked by armed pirates off Yemen and…
Shipping Minister Sarbananda Sonowal said all concerned agencies are working day and night to ensure the safety of 22 Indian seafarers on two commercial vessels hijacked by armed pirates off Yemen and Somalia. The government has directed the Directorate General of Maritime Administration to set up a dashboard for real-time information on Indian seafarers in the region, irrespective of the ship's flag.
The Eritrea-flagged tanker M.T. Sibu 1, with 16 Indians among 20 crew, was hijacked on August 20 in the Gulf of Aden. The Cameroon-flagged M/V LUTUF, with six Indians among 10 crew, was hijacked on August 17 off Somalia. The minister said every Indian seafarer in the affected region must be individually accounted for. The crew are safe, according to the latest official information.
Indian Opinion Analysis
India is the world's second-largest supplier of seafarers after the Philippines, supplying an estimated 311,936 seafarers as per the 2026 BIMCO-ICS report. This gives the country a large exposure to piracy and geopolitical risks in the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden and Strait of Hormuz. The dashboard ordered by Sonowal is intended to give real-time tracking of Indian crew on any vessel in the region. The next step will be whether the government formally requests naval assistance from regional coalitions or deploys Indian warships for escort operations, as it has done in previous piracy crises.
Source: theprint.in
This brief was synthesised by AI from the source linked above.
