The sun had risen when the cargo ship MT Apex anchored off Bonnie Island, Nigeria. At that time, Sadeep Chaudhry could see dozens of other planes near the deck of the plane. Oil storage tanks were visible on the shore from afar.
Sadeep made two telephone calls after breakfast. One to his parents and the other to his fianc Bhagyashree.
He told her everything was fine and he would call again sometime today. Then he went to sleep.
It was April 19, 2019. This relatively small and old oil tanker with its 15-member crew made a two-day voyage from the Port of Lagos to the Niger Delta, where the Dutch and British discovered oil in the 1950s.
Although Sadeep knew that the area's semi-swampy Tamar forests were a haven for dangerous pirates, he still felt safe that day.
Nigerian Navy personnel were patrolling the area in their speedboats. MT Apex Island was anchored seven nautical miles off the coast and awaiting permission to enter the port.
Seven West African countries are located on the warm waters of the Gulf of Guinea and are considered the most dangerous in the world due to piracy.
Earlier, Somalia was considered the most dangerous area, but now it has become a hotbed of piracy. Last year, 90 percent of all shipbuilders around the world were kidnapped for ransom in the same area.
According to the International Maritime Bureau, which monitors such incidents, 64 crew members of six ships were hijacked in the last three months of 2019 alone. While many incidents were not reported.
There is a large amount of oil in this area which could have changed the lives of the people here but for most people this oil has proved to be a torment. Water and land have become toxic due to oil spills in places. In addition, oil exploration and looting have sparked violent conflicts that have been going on for decades.
The life expectancy in the villages near the oil pipelines is only 45 years, while the Nigerian government and international oil companies earn billions of dollars from these pipelines.
Armed groups with legendary names such as the Niger Delta Avengers blow up pipelines, paralyzing oil production. These armed groups demand redistribution of wealth and resources.
On the other hand, there are groups that steal large quantities of crude oil and sell it in the market, making it usable in indigenous refineries hidden in the forests. The level of violence in the area is more or less the same, but the danger is always there.
Several hours later, Sadeep's eyes opened with screams and loud noises. A surveillance officer in the control room saw nine armed men in a boat rushing towards the ship. The officer's screaming warning was heard throughout the plane and chaos spread among the crew members. They could not stop the pirates but at least they could try to hide and that is what they did.
Sadeep, 28, was the ship's third officer and was in charge of five personnel from India. They knew there was no oil in the ship, so the pirates would target crew members who would be kidnapped for a large ransom.
In general, American and European personnel are valuable to pirates because their companies pay large sums of money for them, but most of the personnel are from developing countries. Only Indian officials at MT Apex that day were non-Africans.
They had five minutes. Sadeep gathered his men in the engine room and then climbed the stairs to the deck to sound the emergency alarm so that the people around could hear it. As he returned to the engine room from the deck, he noticed that he was wearing only underwear. At that moment, the first glimpse of the assailants was seen wearing T-shirts and covering their faces with black clothes.
They were carrying guns and confidently trying to climb the ladder.
Sadeep and his companions decided to hide on the plane in a small storeroom. In a short time, the pirates were circling the ship. The sellers hiding in the store were trembling with fear but remained silent. Many ships passing through the Gulf of Guinea have built bulletproof safe rooms to avoid such a situation, but there was no such facility on the MT Apex.
Shortly afterwards, the storeroom door opened with an explosion, and the pirates fired at the floor, hitting Sandeep in the shin, but his bone survived. The pirates gathered the sailors on the deck. The pirates knew they had little time because the ship's captain had sounded the emergency alarm and another ship may have heard gunfire.
The pirates ordered the Indian sailors to board the speedboat parked near the ship through the stairs. The pirates had two engines to speed up the boat. The 22-year-old Chirag, who was on his first voyage, first obeyed the pirates' orders, descending the stairs, then one by one, all the crew, including the ship's captain, reached the pirate boat.
Six abductees, including five Indians and a Nigerian, boarded the boat and left quickly. An Indian sailor managed to escape the pirates and was on the deck.
'Dear Sir, Sandeep's plane has been hijacked'
Pradeep Chaudhry received a message from a shipping agent at midnight. "Sir, Sandeep's plane has been hijacked. The ship's Greek owner is looking into the matter. Don't worry Nothing will happen to Sadeep. Please be patient. '
Pradeep Chaudhary and his wife Suniti were very upset when they got this message. He had spoken to his own son a few hours earlier.
Pradeep started forwarding this message to his family members and Sadeep's close friends and asked if it could be true and if anyone had heard about it.
Anyone who knows Sadeep will say that he was a naughty boy as a child. He was always looking for an adventure outside the house. Sadeep's mother was always worried about him. He lives in Bhubaneswar, a small town in Orissa.
Bhubaneswar is a place that people in Delhi, Mumbai or Bangalore rarely think of but Pradeep Chaudhary has a small photocopy shop and he was living a quiet life there.
The idols of Bhubaneswar temples are staring at the busy streets of the city but Sadeep does not believe in any deity. He thought that life would be what he would make with his fianc بھاe Bhagiashree. Sadeep met Bhagiashree at school. Bhagiashree has now become a software engineer.
This is a loving Indian couple who are not dreaming of a traditional life like their parents.
There are millions of Indians like him who are walking around with degrees and certificates. The country's economy is booming, but it is rapidly entering the graduate market for those who do not have suitable jobs.
For Sandeep, the job of a seller was an opportunity to get out of his environment. He was attracted to the shipping industry because of his good income and opportunities to see the world. And he was not alone in that.After Filipinos and Indonesians, there are more Indian sellers. He has worked as a cook, engineer, and officer on ships. In 2019, 234,000 Indians were working on foreign ships.
Getting the right qualification for shipping is a complex matter. Sandeep studied for five years and his family spent thousands of dollars on it. At the age of 27, he qualified as a third officer and got a tattoo on his right hand in celebration of his success.
With the release of which has been treated
On the first morning of the abduction, dozens of armed men came out of the forest and started firing in the air, which lasted for about half an hour. Five Indians were sitting on a car-sized wooden platform watching the firing.
It was his prison where his captors had taken him several hours to get there. In the early days, the kidnappers' only message to the kidnappers was, "If we don't get a ransom, we'll kill you."
Sadeep was still wearing underwear and itching all night from mosquito bites. He was injured during the abduction, but his captors did not provide him with a bandage and he covered the wound with mud. Five people had a dirty ass on which they slept alternately and then after a few minutes they would wake up with a jolt and remember where they were.
The kidnappers pulled a human skeleton out of the forest and showed it to the abductors, saying that if their boss refused to pay a ransom, their fate would be the same. Then one day he showed Sadeep and his companions a block of bricks and said that if they did not get the ransom, they would tie the bricks to their legs and throw them into the sea.
The guards were always close to him. The guards sometimes caught fish, sometimes drank marijuana or local liquor, but kept a close eye on the abductees. He used to shoot at them and say that if your boss did not pay the ransom, he would shoot them.
Sadeep tried to connect with them several times.
Tried to talk about their families, about their children, but they either kept quiet or said don't talk to us. He seemed to be instructed by his leader, whom he called 'The King', not to talk to the hostages.
Sadeep, Chirag, Avinash, Ankit, Avinash and Moghu had no choice but to save their energies and wait for a better time.
The kidnappers would give them a cup of noodles once a day, which all five would eat. They took turns taking a spoon. In the evening they also get a cup of noodles.
They had nothing but dirty water to drink. This water often contained petrol. Sometimes they would be forced to drink salty water due to thirst. The abducted Nigerian man was kept in a separate hut by the kidnappers and was treated well.
That is why the Indian hostages started hating the Nigerian hostages.
To pass the time, he would talk about his life in India and sometimes even plan for the future. They would look at the natural scenery around them and also observe how the snakes were climbing the trees. If the kidnappers saw a monkey, they would shoot at it and then roast it on wood and eat it, but they never shared it with the kidnappers.
The abductees used to draw lines on the wood to keep track of each passing day.
Meanwhile, Sadeep contracted malaria. Sometimes they were obsessed and thought that if the kidnappers came to kill them, they would kill at least three. Many times he would laugh and try to keep his morale high. Meanwhile, Sadeep wondered how he could get his colleagues out of the situation and what they would say if he talked to a member of his own family or the Indian High Commission.
The kidnappers initially demanded millions of dollars in ransom
The kidnappers also knew that they would not receive such a ransom. The kidnappings have been the subject of lengthy negotiations for ransom, but they have no shortage of time in these Nigerian hunting grounds.
Fifteen days after the abduction, the pirates put Sadeep in another boat and took him to the jungle, where he spoke on a satellite phone to Capt. Christos Trois, the owner of a Greek company. Petrograss, Captain Christaus's company, owns several oil tankers and operates in West Africa.
Sadeep didn't know much about Captain Christaus, but he had heard that he had a bad temper. "Sir, we are in a bad condition, hurry up, we may die here," Sadeep told Christaus.
Christaus was angry at the incident but was not showing any flexibility in demanding a ransom. At the same time, the kidnappers were shouting, "We just need money. If your people don't pay, we will kill you."
These pirates demand ransom from the owners of the shipping companies.
Often they get the ransom quickly because these companies have insurance and they pay the ransom and redeem their employees. But this time they were fed up with a stubborn Dharma man who was not ready to accept their demands. Now the kidnappers have started contacting the families of the abductees in India.
In India, Sadeep's parents were awake and spending the night. All sorts of whispers would come to their minds and then it would be morning. She feared that her son would never return.
Sadeep's family had no means of recovering their sons by paying a ransom to the kidnappers. The Indian government does not pay a ransom, but he hoped that the Indian government could use other means to help secure the release of the hostages.
Sadeep's fianc بھاe Bhagiashree and one of his cousins, Swapna, took matters into their own hands. They formed a WhatsApp group of family members and began trying to rescue their sons.
It soon became clear to Bhagiashree that the pirates would get nothing by killing the hostages, but she was still nervous. The only option they had was to force the ship's owner to pay a ransom. To that end, they work all the time. Tweet, email people for help and contact them wherever they can.
After three weeks of silence, good news arrived for the family.
The abducted Avinash called his sister and told her that he was still alive but in dire need of help. The families of the other abductees began receiving phone calls from their sons, but neither Sadeep's parents nor Bhagiashree received any phone calls.
During this time a strange relationship began to develop.
Capt. Naseeb, a relative of one of the abductees who has been working in the shipping sector, got in touch with the kidnappers and started talking to them regularly. Captain Naseeb posted an audio recording of his conversation with the kidnappers to the WhatsApp group. The hijacker can be heard saying that the owner of the ship does not care about the lives of his employees and he is evading.
This audio was disturbing for the families of the abductees.
The kidnappers spoke to Sadeep's Captain Naseeb on May 17, 2019, and he said that his troubles would end in a few days. Captain Naseeb told Sadeep that as an officer it was his duty to restore the morale of the other hostages. Sadeep was heard saying in Hindi, 'Yes, yes, I am trying. Tell my family that you have spoken to me. '
The kidnappers were moving the hostages from one place to another every week. When negotiations with the owner of the company, Captain Christaus, failed, the 'King' of the kidnappers began to approach the abductors himself. He didn't say much and the other kidnappers treated him with respect.
Her size probably determined her position in the group. King, six and a half feet tall, carried a larger gun than the other kidnappers and a leather belt wrapped around his waist filled with bullets.
He came every four or five days. He asserted that his confession had been obtained through torture and that his confession had been obtained through torture.
After weeks in captivity, Sailor became very weak and his bones became prominent, his eyes pale and some began to bleed. Whenever the leader of the kidnappers came, the kidnappers felt that they too were going to suffer the same fate as the person whose body was shown to them on the first day.
Until now, the crew of the Apex ship had been abducted and ransom was being demanded for their release, but now the situation has taken a new turn. The Nigerian Navy has publicly accused the tanker company of being involved in smuggling oil from the Niger Delta, and the kidnapping was also the result of a feud between criminal gangs. The Nigerian Navy made some arrests, and the manager of the Apex Company in Nigeria apparently admitted to being involved in the illicit oil trade.
However, Captain Christaus, the owner of Apex, strongly denies this.
The BBC has seen some emails blaming the Indian government. "At the request of the Nigerian Navy of India, their ship and the crew of the company in Nigeria have been detained in order to force me to pay a large ransom to the terrorists," he said.
Indian officials do not agree with this position. The Nigerian Navy has not commented.
It was a critical situation for the abductees, but when Captain Christaus feared the closure of his business in Nigeria, he began to deal with the kidnappers. Sadeep's family learned on June 13 from government sources that negotiations had been completed and arrangements were being made to pay the ransom. At the same time, the sellers were told that their troubles were about to end.
On June 29, 2019, when the kidnapper handed him a cup of noodles, one of them quietly told Sadeep that if the payment was made today, it would be his last day in the forest. Seventy days had passed since his abduction.
Two hours later, the abductees were told that the man who had brought the money had left.
An old and frail Ghanaian man came aboard a boat. He was holding a plastic bag full of US dollars. Within minutes of his arrival, it became clear that something was wrong. A group of pirates started beating the old man.
King, the ringleader of the kidnappers, was shouting that the money was not enough. He pulled a small knife from his belt and struck the old man in the leg.
The leader of the kidnappers then came to the kidnappers and said that the person who brought the money will stay there but the kidnappers are free and their people will not stop them but if someone else kidnaps them then he will not be responsible for it. ۔
He looked into Sadeep's eyes and said, "Bye bye."
The kidnapped Indians hurried to the boat carrying the ransom. Sadeep told the boat driver to take them back to where they came from.
Two months later, Sadeep was still in the same underwear in which he was abducted.
However, the kidnappers gave him a torn T-shirt. After a four-hour journey, the driver told them the boat had run out of oil and dropped them off at a jetty. There was a small village nearby where some men were playing football barefoot.
Sadeep and four of his fellow sailors approached them and told them they had been abducted. They took him to a house and gave him bottles of water which he drank immediately. The three elder men of the village guarded the guest house where they were kept all night.
Indian sailors who had become very weak felt safe here. "It was as if God Himself had appointed them as our protectors," says Sadeep.
They soon reached Lagos, Nigeria, where they waited for a flight to Mumbai. After so much trouble, when Sadeep was alone in a hotel room for the first time, he drank a glass of cold beer, took a bath and examined the wounds on his body. A few days ago, a kidnapper injured his shoulder with a fish-cutting knife.
An Indian diplomat gave him a pack of cigarettes, which he finished in the next hour.
It has been eight months since these sellers were released. Sadeep's mother is baking bread on the kitchen floor. Nearby, Sadeep's father is watching a match between India and New Zealand on TV.
Suniti loudly calls her son Sadeep to eat. During his 70 days in the jungle, Sadeep lost 20 kg. When he returned home, the bones of his face were clear. Sadeep's mother weighed her son several times in the first month and was very happy whenever he started gaining weight.
Bhagiashree turns the steel plate towards her mother-in-law and her gold bangles come down. Bhagiashree says: 'I was sure he would come back. Our life has just begun, how can I live without it. I believed in God that He would come back.
Sadeep and Bhagiashree got married in January. They live on the first floor of the house. They eat together with their parents every evening. Sadeep's cousin Swapna also came this evening and campaigned hard for his release.
It seems that Sadeep has returned to his family and found stability. He is now teaching young sailors on maritime safety at a maritime college. He has stopped going to sea now.
It seems that Sadeep has reunited with his family and friends and started enjoying the joys of life again, but it is difficult to say how deep the 70-day imprisonment has left him.
They don't talk about it anymore.
As we drive through the dark streets of Bhubaneswar, they tell me, 'That trauma is still there, but well, I'm married, my family, my friends are all here. If I go to sea again, maybe it will come back. '
Sadeep and his companions have returned alive but their quarrel with their company is still going on. He has not been paid since he returned. Sadeep thinks his company has to pay him ڈالر 10,000 in salary.
But Captain Christaus, the owner of the Apex company, has not answered a detailed question about the abduction and release of these Indian sailors. Nor did he say that he had to pay salaries to Indian sellers. He also did not say what happened to the Ghanaian citizen who went to the kidnappers with the ransom money.
However, Captain Christaus told us in an email that all the hostages had been released and returned to their homes. He denies that his company is involved in the illegal sale or purchase of oil. He says he went to Bonnie Island to repair the tanker. A lawsuit is pending in Nigeria in this regard.
What happened to Sadeep shows the dangers posed to sellers at the forefront of world trade. This is a sector where there are laws and regulations to protect workers, but they are very difficult to enforce.
Nigeria's oil reaches Western Europe, even Britain and India. Stories like Sadeep show how difficult shipping is in the Gulf of Guinea. Unlike Somalia, Nigeria is Africa's largest economy and does not allow international navies to patrol its waters.
The circumstances that Sadeep has gone through, if he goes through such a situation again, it will be a very cruel act, but it seems that he is ready to go to any lengths to continue his career. He told me: 'The trouble I faced meant that I could face anything in life. No one can break me mentally. This is a second birth for me and I am living another life.
I asked him if he really felt like he was living another life, to which he replied: 'It's not a matter of feeling, this is my second life.
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