Officials apathetic, say sailors, friends

Nine days after ship MV Masshour sunk into the sea near Iran, it has come to light that no Indian representative from the Indian High Commission at Tehran visited the accident site, if sailors and friends of deceased sailor Palash Balsetwar are to be believed.

Sailors and friends told Palash’s family from Iran that not a even a single representative from the Indian High Commission visited them in the nine days after MV Mashhour met with an accident on March 15, 2016.

“There is no safety provided to sailors by ship owners in Iran and no single official from Indian High Commission in Tehran or the external affairs ministry is paying heed to our sufferings,” Palash’s friend Sam Gill told Palash’s sister Payal Balsetwar.

Mr Gill said that they had been communicating with the Indian authorities via phone calls, but nobody had visited them.

“In the past too, whenever we have called the Indian High Commission or the external affairs ministry in Delhi for issues sailors face at their workplace in Iran, we have never got any positive feedback,” he added.

Maintaining its earlier stand, an MEA official close to the developments said, “We are trying our best to bring back Palash’s body back from Iran and the main obstacle in bringing back the body is official work not being carried out till April 4, 2016 which is when the Navroze holidays end.”

Meanwhile, an email sent on Wednesday to the spokesperson of the ministry of external affairs, Vikas Swarup, about the procedure of bringing back taking time, remained unanswered.