Able seaman Abdur Rehman was asleep after finishing his night shift at 6 a.m. aboard the SkyLight, a Palau-flagged oil tanker owned by United Arab Emirates-based Red Sea Ship Management LLC, when two loud explosions jolted him awake early on the morning of March 1. The force of the blasts threw him off his bed. Still groggy, he stumbled out of his dorm room to find the ship blacked out, thick smoke filling the air. Disoriented, he struggled to make sense of what was happening when a colleague pulled him outside. That’s when he saw the vessel was on fire.
“If I was late by 10 [or] 20 seconds, I would not have been able to leave,” Rehman said. He had joined the crew on Jan. 24 from Dubai and had been sent to Oman to help clean the ship before its next trip.
Approximately 20,000 seafarers are still stranded on the 2,500 ships stuck west of the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow channel linking the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf along Iran’s coast. An estimated 2,500 to 3,000 of those sailors are, like Rehman, Indian. The Indian maritime community has been badly struck by the Iran war.
“I was in a state of shock,” Rehman recounted of the explosions on the SkyLight. “My brain stopped working.” He added that two of his Indian colleagues, the captain and an oiler, had been killed by the strike.
Rescued by Omani authorities just hours after the blast, Rehman was taken to a hotel where he spent 17 anxious nights unable to sleep, fearing another attack. His documents were lost in the fire, and he waited for days before the Indian government arranged his repatriation. He returned to India with nothing but the clothes on his back on March 18.
As the third largest source nation of sailors, India supplies crew to commercial ships all over the world. However, it also tops the list of nations with the most abandoned seafarers, crewmembers left stranded by shipowners, often without food, supplies, wages, or a safe way home.
Seafaring is seen in India as a potentially lucrative job, especially for workers facing limited opportunities ashore. Under Indian law, recruitment and placement of seafarers is meant to take place through licensed agencies. In practice, however, unauthorized intermediaries and sub-agents continue to operate, exposing some seafarers to illegal fees, deceptive jobs, and weak protection. Many Indian seafarers serve on foreign-flag vessels, including ships registered under flags of convenience. Where oversight and enforcement are weak, this can heighten the risk of contract violations, unpaid wages, and, in severe cases, abandonment.
According to data compiled by the International Transport Workers’ Federation, a global organization representing more than 16.5 million transport workers from over 100 countries, seafarer abandonment reached record levels in 2025, with 6,223 seafarers abandoned across 410 ships. Indians were among the hardest hit, with 1,125 seafarers abandoned by the end of 2025.
Rakesh Ranjan, South Asia regional coordinator at the Institute for Human Rights and Business, told Foreign Policy this reflected a systemic problem designed to enable dubious recruitment practices, making Indians the “most victimized group of workers.”
On March 23, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi told the lower house of the Indian Parliament that the Indian government was actively engaging with global suppliers and monitoring Persian Gulf shipping routes to ensure the safe passage of India-bound vessels carrying oil, gas, fertilizers, and other essential commodities.
So far, a total of eight previously stranded India-flagged liquefied petroleum gas tankers have reached India after crossing the Strait of Hormuz. The safe passage is attributed to successful diplomatic engagement between India and Iran, allowing these ships to bypass disruptions.
Even as repatriation efforts continue, concerns remain over the risks faced by those still at sea.
“My problem is [the Indian government is] forcing ships to cross the water and you are not even considering the lives of seafarers as important,” Ranjan said. “For you, the commodity they are trading is more important than the people and their lives. You are only interested because you have a [liquified petroleum gas] crisis or [piped natural gas] crisis.” There is a domestic gas crunch in India as a result of stalled supplies.
Amitabh Kumar, former director general of shipping for the Indian government, argued that any movement through the strait depends on securing safe passage, whether through bilateral arrangements, international coordination, or naval escort.
“I don’t think any ship owner is going to unilaterally decide to transit the Strait of Hormuz in this situation without any agreement with the Iranian authorities,” he explained. “So, [it is] only when there is a safe passage allowed that a ship would venture into the Strait. If there is no agreement, then they should just stay put at a safe place.”
Echoing the sense of caution, Sushil Deorukhkar, a shipping inspector with the International Transport Workers’ Federation, said this was not a routine situation but a critical one.
The Indian government’s focus has largely been on Indian-flagged vessels, he said. “But what about [ships flying under flags of convenience]?” he asked. “Indians are on those ships too. Why are we not talking about the numbers of people on board those vessels?”
Deorukhkar argued that flag of convenience ships, often registered in countries with lax regulations and tax benefits, leave seafarers especially vulnerable during crises.
“The seafarers are in one place, the owners are somewhere else, and they are not coming forward to safeguard their crew.”
Kumar said the immediate challenge was simply establishing where ships and crews are.
“The first step is to make an assessment of how many seafarers are actually there,” he said. “The location of those ships on a day-to-day basis is not available.”
He explained that India’s response is shaped by layered priorities. Indian-flagged vessels, which often carry all-Indian crew as well as cargo and national assets, are prioritized. Foreign-flagged ships with Indian crew are also tracked but require coordination with multiple jurisdictions.
“That doesn’t mean India does not care for its citizens on other vessels,” he said. “But in a war-like situation, the only issue left is diplomacy.”
The current assessment, Kumar said, is that staying put is safer than attempting transit without guarantees. Ranjan, however, argued that staying put is also dangerous, as crews risk running out of supplies with no easy way to replenish them.
“You cannot ask [sailors] to remain on board and wait for the war to end,” Ranjan said, warning that the sailors are effectively “waiting for death,” especially as many ships remain close to vulnerable harbor areas where the risk of attack is high.
India is a signatory to the 2006 Maritime Labor Convention, often called the seafarers’ bill of rights, which sets minimum global standards for working and living conditions at sea, including strict rules on recruitment practices.
However, Ranjan noted many workers are unaware of their rights, where to find authorized recruitment agents, or what zero-cost recruitment means in practice. This, he said, pointed to a structural problem, where poor information allows exploitation to continue.
The absence of campaigns or outreach around zero recruitment cost is by design, Ranjan said. He called it a business model: It makes it easy to take money from seafarers while making legal, no-cost options the most difficult to find.
Manoj Yadav, general secretary of the Forward Seamen’s Union of India, said that seafarers have little control over whether they take on risky assignments and can be easily replaced if they refuse.
“There was a case with us recently, a vessel was sailing from Saudi Arabia to China,” Yadav said. “The whole crew refused [to sail]. So, they were replaced from [India]. And people went knowing that the vessel would cross the Strait [of Hormuz].”
Despite the risks, many are still willing to accept a small additional allowance to take such assignments, Yadav said.
“There are two kinds of people,” he said. “One is refusing and the other is ready to replace them and sail.
“It’s dollars for Indians. If they are getting an additional $400 [to] $500, that’s enough for them.” Here Yadav referred to the high-risk allowance some companies are offering for routes through the Strait. “If they go on board, they will do extra work like extra watch, so overtime increases. So that number will go much higher.”
Despite the International Maritime Organization’s directive that seafarers have the right to refuse a job, many fear being blacklisted by employers. “Very few companies are following the guidelines,” Yadav said. “The others may say, ‘If you do not stay today, tomorrow we will not allow you to sail anymore within our company.’”
This lack of real choice, Ranjan said, feeds into a larger systemic problem of abandonment of Indian seafarers. While Indian seafarers are formally cleared by the government before deployment, the state’s role is largely limited. India positions itself as a “facilitator of employment,” not a “promoter of recruitment,” which, Ranjan said, reduces its legal obligation once workers are placed on ships.
The government verifies documents, training, and certification and issues clearances, but beyond that, its role becomes largely supportive. It steps in only when seafarers seek help. In cases involving foreign or flag-of-convenience vessels, responsibility often shifts further away, leaving workers dependent on multiple jurisdictions.
Lack of awareness continues to trap workers, particularly those from remote areas who pay recruiters to enter the industry without fully understanding the risks or their rights, often lured by misleading advertisements and recruiting agents, Deorukhkar said.
That same vulnerability is now playing out at sea, Ranjan said, where the immediate priority should be diplomatic engagement and safety. He warned that cost-cutting by companies often kept ships in open waters without docking, pushing crews into survival conditions.
“Docking costs money, so ships remain in open waters without anchoring—which means generators are switched off, there is no temperature control, food is rationed, and captains are forced to manage limited supplies for extended survival as crews effectively operate in survival mode,” Ranjan said. “Hundreds of things are taking place right now.”
For those sailors who have made it back to India, the relief is tempered by fear for those left behind. Although relieved to be on his way home, Rehman said he worried about others still stranded at sea, waiting for help to arrive.
“Nobody should have to experience the horrors that we did,” Rehman told Foreign Policy, finally on his way to his home.
