By Aroonim Bhuyan, IANS
Dubai : All the 17 Indian sailors who were rescued from a ship that had capsized off the Bahrain coast last week are now back in India.
“All the 17 sailors flew to Mumbai Feb 5 evening and they reached Porbandar in Gujarat yesterday,” India’s Ambassador to Bahrain Balkrishna Shetty told IANS over the phone from Manama Thursday.
The 1,000-tonne capacity Siddnath was shipping about 485 tonnes of rice to Iraq for a United Arab Emirates (UAE) shipping company when it capsized off the Bahrain coast Feb 1.
The Bahrain coastguard rescued the sailors, all from Gujarat, on board.
The ambassador said that Narendra Shial, owner of the Dubai-based shipping company Sea Star which ran the vessel, came to Bahrain and worked with the Indian mission and the Bahraini authorities to see off the sailors.
Earlier, the Indian embassy in Bahrain had expressed serious concern over shipping operations in the region following the incident.
“This is actually the third time such an incident involving an Indian vessel has happened (in recent times) and we are really concerned,” Shetty had said.
He said the mission was awaiting a report from the Bahrain government regarding the incident and would then act accordingly.