Eight days have passed since the MT El Gaia took a direct hit in the Strait of Hormuz. For Komal Priya in Vaishali, Bihar, that silence is deafening. Her husband, Sumit Kumar Singh, a 35-year-old oiler, was last heard from hours before the projectile struck the vessel on September 13. He was crossing the strait. Then the ship came under attack.
The crew abandoned ship. An Omani rescue team pulled the survivors to shore. Singh was not among them. A relative, speaking on condition of anonymity, recounted the terrifying details: crew members tried to reach the engine room but were stopped by heat, smoke, and total darkness. They left. The ship is now being towed to port, taking on water, and the family is terrified he is still inside, trapped in the dark.
The bureaucratic silence is making the fear worse. "I wrote emails on September 14 and 18, but no reply was given," the relative said, adding that an official rudely told them to stop hounding the department. The hiring company, Ultra Ship Management, is providing updates, but the Directorate General of Shipping (DG Shipping) has not shared an incident report. The family is relying on the Omani embassy for assistance while Indian authorities remain silent.
This neglect stings because the risk was flagged months ago. On July 15, the Directorate General of Maritime Administration (DGMA) explicitly directed shipowners to avoid deploying Indian seafarers on the Strait of Hormuz route due to escalating West Asia tensions. Singh had left home in June, likely before that advisory fully sank in, or despite it. The attacks on Indian-flagged vessels began earlier this year as the crisis accelerated, but this specific incident has turned a bureaucratic oversight into a family tragedy. The 7-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son are waiting for their father to walk through the door. The family is demanding the Indian government and Omani naval authorities expedite the search. If Singh is alive, every minute inside that flooding hull counts.