‘At gunpoint, we survived on bread and two cups of water’

Early on August 21, when the ship was moving along the Somalian coast in the Gulf of Aden that separates the horn of Africa from the Arabian peninsula, Jeevan heard loud gunfire. “Many of us ran out on the deck. We saw a group of men in two tiny speedboats close to the ship. The ship’s radar had failed to pick them up. The men were firing in the air,” he said.

“There were 16 of them. They threw a ladder fitted with grappling hooks over the side of the ship and clambered aboard. They stormed all cabins and herded the entire crew into a small room, and told the captain to cut the engine.

“By this time, most of us had had a chance to speak with our families over the satellite phone. We knew what was happening: the ship had been hijacked. Soon afterward, the pirates sealed the communications room and, for the rest of their time on board, manned the entrance round the clock.”

According to Jeevan, the pirates spoke in the Somali language, with one of them translating. Initially, all they asked for was $10,000, and the captain was relieved to hand it over. But the ordeal had only just begun.

The pirates said their boats were out of fuel, and asked for them to be towed to a nearby port. The ship travelled to Reassban on the Somali coast, where it was detained for a day, at the end of which period, the pirates took it to another port, Reassaaf.

“We spent two days at Reassaaf. Then the pirates said we must move again, to escape other gangs in surrounding waters. They said they were taking us to the Ely coast, where their boss, Abdul Hakeem, would meet us.”

But this wasn’t how things unfolded. For the next two weeks, the Iran Deyanat shuttled between the Gulf of Aden and Reassaaf. The pirates did not seem to have a destination, and seemed to be working only to make their hostages insecure and exhausted. “They frequently threatened to sell our ship to the most dreaded hijackers in the region,” Jeevan said.

Meanwhile, provisions were running out. The pirates had already emptied the ship’s store, leaving the crew only with sliced bread. After a few more days, the crew’s daily ration came down to four slices of bread and two cups of water. The hijackers themselves ate well, slaughtering sheep on the deck and feasting on chunks of mutton while sitting around a large plate. They also chewed constantly on some kind of local narcotic leaf, Jeevan said.

The Ely coast of north eastern Somalia is notorious for its pirates. Several ships had been detained there before the Iran Deyanat steamed in. The pirates anchored the ship five nautical miles from the coast, and the pirate boss Abdul Hakeem came on board in a speed boat, accompanied by an entourage of bodyguards, all carrying modern weapons. He asked for $5 million as ransom. A phase of negotiations then opened, which lasted for a month.

In appearance and behaviour, the pirates were a paradox, Jeevan said. They seemed like crude, illiterate men who wore nothing but filthy, torn lengths of cloth tied around their waists, but were remarkably adept in handling the most sophisticated weapons and complex, GPS-enabled navigational systems. They appeared to be in a highly disciplined, hierarchical organization, with officers in various ranks, and a well equipped central control room on land, from where every movement of the ship was constantly monitored.

“Our ship seemed to be getting a somewhat sympathetic treatment because it belonged to a Muslim nation. They asked us every day if there were any non-Muslims on board. I was asked my name several times. I made up a name to save my skin, as did another Indian from Goa, the only two non-Muslims on board,” Jeevan said.

“In the last 10 days of captivity, fungus grew on the bread. As the ransom negotiations dragged on, the pirates sometimes got restive, threatening to shoot us. Sometimes, they shot at bubbles in the water, thinking the ship was being stormed, when it was probably only some ocean creature like perhaps, a whale.

“In early October, came the message that an Iranian vessel had reached Somali waters with the ransom money. The pirates sent the ship’s chief officer to fetch it, warning him that the captain would be on the ship with a gun to his head till he returned with the money.

When the money came into their hands, the pirates scanned them with fake-currency detectors. Ten people then left, and once the money was safely on land, the rest left too, and the ship was released. That was on October 10.”

Iran naval ships escorted the ship till Oman, where the crew disembarked. Jeevan and the two other Indians flew home on Thursday.