Indian sailor Patnala Suresh was killed in a US strike near the Gulf of Oman. He had told his wife he would return home safely. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing BBC News.
Patnala Bhargavi said her husband told her he would be home soon. The couple were looking forward to celebrating their 15th wedding anniversary this month. Instead, Suresh was killed on Wednesday when the US military struck the MT Settebello, an oil tanker, in the Gulf of Oman. The attack was part of Washington's effort to enforce a blockade on Iran-linked shipping, with the US military saying the tanker had ignored repeated warnings and was carrying Iranian oil. The vessel's managers dispute that account, saying it had no connection to Iran and received no warning before it was hit. Twenty-one other crew members were rescued.
The deaths have reverberated across India. Three Indian sailors were killed: Patnala Suresh, 23-year-old Aditya Sharma, and 35-year-old Shivanand Chaurasia. Their families are mourning and seeking answers. In a post on X, Shipping Minister Sarbananda Sonowal said efforts were under way to bring the sailors' bodies back, describing their deaths as a "profound loss" to India's maritime community. India has also lodged a strong protest with Washington over the strike, summoning a senior US diplomat and calling for an end to attacks on commercial vessels in the region.
For Bhargavi, the wider geopolitical fallout feels distant. She keeps returning to their last conversation. "There have been attacks in this area and some people have been killed. But don't worry about me. I'll come home safely, and we'll celebrate our anniversary properly," she recalls him saying. The 39-year-old now struggles to reconcile that promise with her husband's death. Suresh had spent around 15 years at sea, working as a marine engineer. As the ship's chief engineer, he was entitled to six months' leave each year but rarely took that much time off. The couple usually spoke on video calls every few days, but from 5 June the calls became increasingly difficult. By 9 June, they had stopped altogether. Bhargavi thought it was a network problem. For two days, she waited for news, before finally finding out that her husband had been killed. On Thursday, the ship's management told the family that there had been no chance of escape when the strike happened. Suresh was inspecting a fault in one of the ship's generators at the time. The family is now calling for his body to be brought back to India and seeking financial assistance from the government, saying he was the household's sole breadwinner. Suresh leaves behind two sons and two nieces he helped raise after Bhargavi's elder sister and brother-in-law died. "The entire family depended on his income. Now I don't know how I'll educate or raise the children," Bhargavi says.
In Hamirpur district in Himachal Pradesh, the family of 23-year-old Aditya Sharma is mourning the loss of their only son. "I want my son's body to be returned to us. We should also be told what happened in his final moments," his father, Rajesh Sharma, told BBC Hindi. He also questioned whether enough had been done to save the crew. "The others were rescued, so why couldn't these three be saved?" he asked. In Deoria district in Uttar Pradesh, the family of 35-year-old Shivanand Chaurasia is grappling with the same grief. A fitter by profession, Chaurasia had left home around eight months ago to work for a foreign shipping company.