3 min readNew DelhiMar 24, 2026 05:55 AM IST
It has been a long wait for the family of Captain Vijay Kumar. On Sunday, Captain Vijay Kumar and seven other Indian seafarers boarded taxis from Bandar Abbas, Iran, to head towards the Armenian border — nearly 2,000 km away — in a bid to return home.
Kumar’s expected return in a few weeks comes nearly four months after his ship, MT Valiant Roar, was detained off the UAE coast near Dibba port by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The vessel was detained on December 8 on suspicion of smuggling diesel from Iran.
Of the 16 Indians on board, eight returned on February 11 following the Delhi High Court’s intervention. For the remaining eight, the crisis in West Asia and strikes on Iran have meant delays and continuing uncertainty.
“On February 27, Vijay and the seven others signed their release papers and we were ecstatic that they will be returning soon, after completing the documentation processes from the Indian Embassy-side within the next 3-4 days. But on February 28 the war broke out and they were stuck. He had been hopeful but on the day he cursed his fate,” Vinod Panwar, Vijay’s cousin, in Noida tells The Indian Express.
The uncertain wait
The UAE-based vessel was intercepted in international waters off Dibba on December 8, 2025, by the IRGC. It was reportedly detained on suspicion of smuggling 6,000 tonnes of diesel, though official records showed it was carrying very low sulphur fuel oil.
“On December 8, at around 2-3 pm, I received a short Whatsapp message from Vijay saying ‘we’re being chased/detained by the naval forces’ but he could not say which country’s Navy, and we had no further details,” says Vinod. “I immediately started making calls to find out the details of his vessel and the operator.”
The family alerted the operator in Dubai, but it adopted a “wait and watch” approach, he says.
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“We had no communication channels with the seafarers. The impasse continued for nearly two weeks as I started reaching out to various authorities including various Embassies and ministries. Two weeks later, he called from a phone he accessed through the naval guard and he wanted to know what was going on. They also did not know why they had been detained. I reassured him at the time even as we were not getting any response,” says Vinod.
