New Delhi: Five months after he was reported dead in a drone strike on an oil tanker anchored in the Gulf of Oman, the wife of Merchant Navy Captain Ashish Kumar has moved the Supreme Court, claiming that her husband is alive and being held in illegal captivity by foreign actors.
In a habeas corpus petition, Anshu Kumar stated that she received a ransom call from an international number demanding Rs 20 lakh for his release.
37-year-old Kumar, from Bettiah in Bihar, was presumed dead after a missile attack on the oil tanker Sky Light near Oman's Khasab port on March 1. The Indian Embassy in Oman at the time said 10 Indian sailors were aboard the parked vessel when it came under attack and caught fire.
Search after the attack
According to the ministry, eight of the crew members were rescued by Omani authorities, but two, Captain Kumar and crew member Dalip, who were in the engine room, remained missing.
On March 4, it was reported that the Omani Coast Guard had found a burnt skull and bones in the captain's room. The embassy at the time said nobody had entered the captain's room and the remains "most likely" belonged to Captain Kumar, according to NDTV report.
However, Kumar's family did not accept the conclusion and claims that the forensic and DNA testing of the remains, with samples provided by the captain's younger brother, yielded a negative match.
Plea before the Supreme Court
Through her habeas corpus petition, Kumar's wife has sought directions to the Government of India, through the Ministries of External Affairs and Home Affairs, to trace, locate and produce the captain by utilising all available diplomatic, consular and intelligence channels.
According to the plea, a WhatsApp message sent by Anshu Kumar was successfully delivered to her husband's secondary mobile phone more than three hours after the missile strike, suggesting the device remained active after the incident.
Ransom call and phone activity
The petition also states that from March 4 onwards, Anshu Kumar allegedly received multiple calls from Indian and international phone numbers, with callers claiming that Captain Kumar was alive and in their custody.
The callers reportedly demanded Rs 20 lakh as ransom for his release. The plea further notes that the WhatsApp account linked to Captain Kumar's primary iPhone was manually deleted on March 31.
It argues that this deletion occurred only 30 days after the strike, significantly earlier than WhatsApp's reported 120-day period for the automatic deletion of inactive accounts, indicating that someone may have deliberately accessed the device.
