Wife Of Indian Captain Missing After Hormuz Strait Ship Attack Moves Supreme Court

The wife of Merchant Navy Captain Ashish Kumar, who was feared to have died in a missile/drone attack on the merchant vessel M.T. Skylight in the Strait of Hormuz on March 1, 2026, has approached the Supreme Court claiming that he is alive and is held in illegal captivity by foreign actors.

She has filed a habeas corpus writ petition in the Supreme Court seeking directions to the Union of India, through the Ministries of External Affairs and Home Affairs, to trace, locate and produce Captain Ashish Kumar by utilising all available diplomatic, consular and intelligence channels.

According to the petition, Captain Ashish Kumar's vessel was anchored near Khasab Port in Oman before allegedly coming under a missile/drone attack on March 1 amid the regional conflict involving the United States, Iran and Israel. Out of 20 crew members, 18 were rescued, while Captain Ashish Kumar and another Indian national were reported missing.

The petitioner states that Indian authorities initially presumed Captain Ashish Kumar dead after burnt skeletal remains were recovered from the Captain's cabin. However, the petition says this presumption collapsed after a DNA comparison with samples provided by the Captain's younger brother yielded a negative match.

According to the plea, the Indian Embassy in Muscat informed the family on May 15, 2026, that the recovered remains did not belong to Captain Ashish Kumar. The petition describes this as conclusive scientific evidence disproving the earlier assumption of death.

The petition also relies on a Biological Technical Examination Report issued by the Directorate General of Search and Criminal Investigation of the Royal Oman Police, which reportedly found no human DNA result from the examined bone fragments.

Apart from the DNA evidence, the petition relies upon electronic evidence to claim that Captain Ashish Kumar remained alive after the attack.

It states that on the day of the attack, a WhatsApp message sent by the petitioner was successfully delivered to the Captain's second mobile phone more than three hours after the vessel was struck, indicating that the device survived the incident.

The plea further alleges that on March 4, 2026, the petitioner received ransom calls from international and domestic numbers demanding Rs.20 lakh for Captain Ashish Kumar's release and claiming that he was alive and in their custody.

Another circumstance relied upon is that the WhatsApp profile linked to the Captain's primary iPhone was manually deleted on March 31, 2026. Since WhatsApp's automatic deletion policy operates only after 120 days of inactivity, the petitioner argues that deletion exactly 30 days after the incident indicates physical operation of the device by unknown persons. The petition also states that calls to the number frequently returned a "call on hold" status.

The petitioner alleges that despite repeatedly informing the Ministry of External Affairs, the Indian Embassy in Muscat, the Directorate General of Shipping and other authorities through emails, legal notices and representations, no specialised cross-border investigation has been undertaken.

The petition contends that the continued failure of the Union Government to trace Captain Ashish Kumar violates his fundamental rights under Article 21.

The petition also seeks directions to preserve the vessel's Voyage Data Recorder, pre-incident communication logs, mobile tracking records and IMEI location data relating to the Captain's mobile phones. It has also sought a direction to the Ministry of External Affairs to initiate high-level diplomatic engagement with the Sultanate of Oman and relevant international maritime authorities to ascertain Captain Ashish Kumar's whereabouts in light of the DNA mismatch and other evidence relied upon in the petition.

Recently, the Supreme Court had directed the Ministry of External Affairs to take steps to trace an Indian seafarer who went missing in Black Sea after a drone attack near Ukraine.

The petition is filed through AoR Prashant Kumar.