NOIDA: A long and anxious wait for families of Indian sailors stranded in Iran since last Dec came to an end on Sunday morning as all eight of them reached Mumbai after a difficult journey across a conflict-hit region.For Mukesh Mehta, a resident of Ghaziabad’s DLF Colony, the moment brought immense relief, though reunion is still a day away. His son Ketan Mehta is among the eight to be back on home soil after uncertainty, weeks of detention and a perilous evacuation that involved driving 2,000km across Iran to reach Armenia and take a flight to Dubai and eventually to Mumbai from there.Ketan, 27, spoke to his father through a borrowed phone. “Ketan called me and said, ‘Papa, we are finally in India’. We had been waiting to hear these words from him for a long time,” Mukesh said.Ketan’s phone was taken away by the Iranian authorities when their ship was seized on Dec 8. The family, including his mother and two sisters, have since spent their days waiting for that call — hoping he would get hold of a phone and inform them that he was okay. While lodged in an Iranian jail, Ketan phoned his family during the calls authorities allowed every two to three days.The sailors’ return follows months of a tumultuous ordeal — from being captured and jailed to their eventual release through diplomatic intervention — and a delayed evacuation as the outbreak of war stalled their journey home.Ketan was in the crew of oil tanker MT Valiant Roar, which was intercepted in international waters near the port of Dibba in UAE and taken to Iran on Dec 8. The vessel had 18 crew members on board — 16 Indians, one Sri Lankan and one Bangladeshi. Iranian authorities later split the team — 10 were moved to Bandar Abbas prison, where Ketan was lodged, while eight were kept confined on the ship.Iranian authorities had alleged that the vessel was involved in the smuggling of around 6,000 tonne of fuel, an allegation the families and crew representatives strongly contested, saying that the tanker was carrying only very low sulphur fuel oil (VLSFO), which is standard, legally loaded cargo.Vijay Kumar, 40, captain of the ship, was also among those to have returned. His family is in Meerut.Speaking from Mumbai on Sunday, Vijay said the ordeal had taken a toll on their mental and physical wellbeing.“It has been a long and tiring journey. We will only be arriving in Delhi after completing all formalities on Monday night. After that, we will head to our respective homes and finally meet our families,” he said.Vijay described the last three months as a “movie”.“It was filled with action, emotion and reaction. We faced gunshots, missiles and bombs. When the war began, just a day before we were going to be evacuated, it felt like a dead end. But finally, we are happy to be back in our country,” said Vijay.The sailors met Forward Sailors Union of India on Sunday and will meet director general of shipping in Mumbai as part of formalities before going home.Like Ketan’s, Vijay’s family has also been on edge, waiting to find out his whereabouts.His cousin Vinod Kumar, a Noida-based Merchant Navy officer, who was among the petitioners to move the Delhi high court in Jan seeking urgent consular access and repatriation, said the families are finally able to breathe.“Vijay’s elderly parents, his wife, Siniya, and children — a 10-year-old son and 14-year-old daughter — in Meerut had been worried sick for the last three months. The only hope was that he remained in intermittent contact with us over the phone. Now that they have reached India, the family cannot wait to see him,” Vinod said.After intervention by the Indian embassy, eight crew members were released on Feb 3 and returned to India on Feb 11. Of the 10, five were imprisoned and five were on the vessel. There has been no official word from Iran on this split.A second breakthrough came on Feb 27, when Iranian agencies released the five Indian sailors lodged in the prison. They were shifted to a hotel while documents for their return were being processed. But the conflict escalated the very next day, derailing evacuation plans and snapping communication.After unsuccessfully waiting for the war to stop, the Indian embassy advised the sailors to travel to Armenia by road from Bandar Abbas, and their journey began on March 22 evening.After reaching the Iran-Armenia border on March 24 following a 2,000-km road journey, the group had to wait two more days before they could cross over.They remained on the Iranian side during this period, staying at a hotel near the border while exit and entry formalities were completed. It was only on March 26 that they received Armenian visas and were finally able to cross into Armenia.On March 27, the sailors travelled to the capital, Yerevan, and reached Zvartnots International Airport. The next day, they boarded a flight to Dubai, from where they took a connecting flight to India, landing in Mumbai on Sunday morning.The final leg of their journey — the road trip out of Iran — came amid active hostilities, with the sailors travelling through a war-hit landscape marked by checkpoints, restricted movement and the constant threat of airstrikes.Sailors who have arrived are Captain Vijay Kumar from Meerut, Anil Kumar Singh from UP, Satish Kumar from Haryana, Ketan Mehta from Ghaziabad, Masood Alam from Bihar, and Nandiki Venkatesh, Jammu Venkatrao and Rajshekhar Dunga from Andhra Pradesh.
