Caught in the Crossfire: Indian Sailors are at Risk in War-torn High Seas

For the family of an Indian seafarer, a missile strike thousands of kilometres away can arrive first as silence on a phone. The usual WhatsApp call does not ring, rumours outpace official information and a profession defined by distance becomes something more frightening: a job on the edge of war.

That fear is no longer theoretical. On July 19, the MV Golden Leo was attacked while leaving the Ukrainian port of Odesa with 17 crew members, including five Indians; four of them were killed. Barely two weeks later, on August 4, the India-flagged MSV Faize Noore Oliya sank in the Red Sea off Yemen after an attack, although all 13 Indians on board were rescued.

India’s growing presence at sea makes such episodes a national concern. The BIMCO-ICS Seafarer Workforce Report 2026 puts India’s seafaring workforce at 311,936—12.16 per cent of the global total—making the country the world’s second-largest supplier of seafarers.

Sea Has Become a Battlefield

Commercial sailors have always lived with risk: storms, fires, machinery failures, piracy, isolation and medical emergencies far from shore. What has changed is the threat. In the Red Sea, the Strait of Hormuz, the Gulf of Aden and the Black Sea, merchant crews now have to factor missiles, drones, mines, electronic interference and the possibility that a civilian ship may be judged by its flag, cargo or ownership.

Deepak Mishra, a chief officer on oil and chemical tankers, says the distinction between civilian work and military danger is becoming dangerously blurred. “Seafarers are non-combatant civilian workers maintaining global supply chains. They must not be treated as collateral damage,” he tells Outlook.

Figures released by India’s maritime regulator—Directorate General of Maritime Administration—underline the danger. By August 7, 15 Indian seafarers had been killed and two remained missing in 57 conflict-related maritime incidents across West Asia and the Black Sea in three months.

The Golden Leo attack brought the peril into especially sharp focus. New Delhi said the vessel was carrying grain, rejected Russia’s claim that it was transporting military cargo, summoned a senior Russian diplomat and described attacks on commercial shipping and the loss of civilian lives as unacceptable.

There is an unsettling contradiction in modern shipping. The world expects merchant vessels to keep moving through geopolitical crises because energy, food, fertiliser, raw materials and goods must still reach markets, but the people running those ships are civilians with no control over the wars surrounding them.

When Phone Stops Ringing

The danger at sea has a second front: the home of the seafarer. Families are accustomed to missed calls and patchy connectivity, but a communications blackout during a security incident carries a different weight.

Mishra says the absence of verified information can become an ordeal of its own. “Sudden loss of contact after a security incident leaves families in acute psychological distress,” he says, adding that relatives can struggle to obtain timely confirmation from shipowners or recruitment and placement service licence (RPSL) agencies.

A casualty figure may appear on a news ticker within minutes, but for a wife, husband, parent or child in India, the question is brutally personal: Is my person alive? Is he injured? Where is he? Who has actually spoken to the ship?

Seafarers themselves are often reluctant to speak publicly. Mishra says many companies strongly discourage media interaction, particularly when voyages touch politically sensitive conflicts, sanctions or military operations. That caution may protect commercial interests, but it also means those most exposed to the danger are often the least heard.

The vulnerabilities are not confined to missile attacks. Mishra points to emergency medical care, delayed evacuation and the ability to preserve mortal remains with dignity during a prolonged diversion as areas where some ships can be underprepared. A crisis may continue for days while a damaged ship waits for a safe port, medical evacuation or permission to change crew.

The Price of Saying No

For some seafarers, the hardest decision comes before the ship reaches the danger zone. War-risk voyages can bring additional pay, but the promise of extra money raises an uncomfortable question: when a family depends heavily on months of income earned at sea, how freely is “consent” given?

Under International Bargaining Forum arrangements, seafarers on IBF-covered vessels entering designated warlike operations areas can receive a bonus equal to 100 per cent of basic wages, doubled death and disability compensation and, in defined circumstances, the right to refuse the voyage and be repatriated at the company’s cost with compensation. Those protections do not automatically cover every Indian seafarer on every foreign-flagged ship.

Mishra believes the line between compensation and coercion can become thin when large incentives are offered for dangerous voyages. “Offering financial incentives to economically vulnerable seafarers puts a price on human life. No amount of bonus salary can replace a seafarer’s life or substitute for safety, naval protection and the right to sign off safely,” he says.

The question matters because India’s maritime labour footprint is expanding rapidly. Indian officers now account for 13.41 per cent of the world’s officer workforce, with 1,40,718 Indian officers serving in the global maritime sector and the government has set a goal of raising India’s overall global seafarer share to 20 per cent.

Yet numerical strength does not always translate into negotiating power for an individual sailor. Crews are scattered across companies, flags and jurisdictions; contracts can be mediated through RPSL agencies; and decisions made thousands of kilometres away can determine whether a sailor crosses a warlike area or waits outside it.

Protection Beyond Gangway

The Indian government has stepped up its maritime crisis architecture as security has worsened. In July, the regulator advised shipowners, managers and recruitment agencies to avoid deploying Indian seafarers through the Strait of Hormuz until further orders; the government has also instituted a 24-hour control room, vessel reporting requirements and the eNavik portal for casualty reporting, crisis management and grievances.

New Delhi has also summoned diplomats from the United States, Iran, Russia and Ukraine over attacks on commercial vessels involving Indian crews. Yet those diplomatic protests have not materially reduced the danger at sea as Indian seafarers continue to operate in contested waters where civilian ships remain vulnerable to missiles and drones.

The system involves coordination with the Indian Navy and maritime information agencies. These are important safeguards, but seafarers argue that protection must also extend to the hours after an incident: calls to families, medical decisions, evacuation paperwork, wage issues and legal representation.

The detention of Captain Ajay Pant in the United Kingdom illustrates a different kind of exposure. Pant, the Indian master of the tanker Smyrtos, was arrested after British authorities seized the vessel in the English Channel on June 14 and charged with allegedly breaching UK sanctions on Russian oil; he has been denied bail and faces trial in December. The proceedings remain active and he is entitled to the presumption of innocence, but the case has sharpened concern over how a ship’s master can become personally entangled in sanctions enforcement arising from commercial orders.

Mishra wants consular and legal assistance to be automatic and fast whenever an Indian mariner is detained abroad, alongside a standard family-communication protocol during emergencies. He also wants regulators to hold recruitment agencies accountable when contractual rights are ignored, and to ensure no seafarer is threatened with blacklisting, loss of employment or wage penalties for lawfully refusing a war-risk voyage.

For India, this is about the obligations that come with becoming a maritime manpower power. A country with more than 300,000 sailors on the world’s ships must also build a protection system capable of following them beyond Indian waters—into foreign ports, foreign courts, conflict zones and the bureaucratic hours after a distress call.

The world notices seafarers when a ship burns, sinks or is seized. Most of the time, their work remains nearly invisible: a watch at 2am, an engine-room round in oppressive heat, a course correction through a narrow strait, another call home postponed because the ship is busy.

But the waters they navigate are changing. For the Indian sailor crossing the Red Sea, waiting outside Hormuz or sailing from a Black Sea port, the horizon can carry more than weather. It can carry a drone, a missile, a naval warning—and, somewhere in India, a family staring at a silent phone.

“Behind every casualty, missing mariner or detained captain is an Indian family enduring extreme mental trauma,” Mishra says. That may be the most important truth in the debate over shipping through the world’s most dangerous waters: cargo has a destination, but every sailor has a home.

Anish Kumar is strategic affairs editor, Outlook

(This story appeared in Outlook magazine’s August 31 issue, 'Whose Idea of India?', in which India’s noted public intellectuals, policymakers, cultural practitioners, political leaders, scholars and economists write in detail about the idea of India they believe can best secure the nation’s future as we celebrate 80 years of independence.)