Abandoned Seafarer India: Repatriation and Wage Rights

A family in Kerala or Goa or Uttar Pradesh gets a message from a port in the Gulf or West Africa. The company has stopped answering. Wages have not come for two months. The crew is on board a vessel nobody is paying for, with no ticket home and no money for food. Indian law now has a name for that situation, and naming it correctly is what unlocks the help.

Section 3(1) of the Merchant Shipping Act, 2025 defines an abandoned seafarer as a seafarer deemed to have been abandoned in violation of the Act, the rules, or the seafarers' employment agreement, where the ship owner does any one of three things:

• (a) fails to cover the cost of the seafarer's repatriation; or
• (b) has left the seafarer without the necessary maintenance and support; or
• © has otherwise unilaterally severed ties with the seafarer, including failure to pay contractual wages for a period of at least two months

Read the word or twice. Any single limb is enough. You do not need all three, and you do not need the vessel to be formally abandoned.

That two month figure in clause © is the most useful number in the statute, because it is objective. Two months of unpaid contractual wages, with ties severed, is not a grievance about a late salary. It is a statutory status that triggers duties on other people.

Section 3(2) separately defines an abandoned vessel as including a vessel abandoned by the ship owner without hope of recovering it or intention of returning to it, a vessel whose master has no financial means for its operation, or a vessel whose owner is unknown or cannot be traced within a reasonable time despite the Central Government notifying the flag State or the consulate of the country of domicile.

Section 91(1) is the operative duty, and it is worded as a shall.

The Indian ambassador at or near the place where a seafarer is abandoned shall, on an application being made to him by the abandoned seafarer, provide, in accordance with the rules made under this Act, for:

1. the return of that seafarer to a proper return port, and
2. his necessary clothing and maintenance until his arrival at that port.

Two things follow from the wording. The duty is triggered by an application, so somebody has to actually ask, in writing, and record that they asked. And the content of the duty runs through rules made under the Act, which is why section 91(2) adds that an abandoned seafarer has no right to be maintained or sent to a proper return port except to the extent and subject to such conditions as may be prescribed.

Section 3 defines proper return port as the port agreed on by the seafarer and employer in the agreement or otherwise, or, in the absence of an agreement, the port where the seafarer was employed or joined the vessel.

This is where most confusion lives, and the Act draws a sharp line based on why the seafarer was left behind.

So the whole financial question turns on the definition of excepted expenses in section 3: repatriation expenses incurred where the cause of the seafarer being left behind is desertion, absence without leave, imprisonment for misconduct, or discharge on the grounds of misconduct.

If your case is unpaid wages and a company that walked away, that is not misconduct, and section 91(3) means the cost is not yours. If an employer later claims it deducted repatriation costs from your wages, ask which limb it says applies and on what evidence.

Section 90 handles the worst case. Where a seafarer is missing or lost with the vessel to which he belongs, the Central Government, or an officer it appoints, may recover the wages and the compensation due to him from the master, ship owner or agent, in the same court and in the same manner in which the seafarer's wages are recoverable, and shall deal with those wages in the same manner as with wages and compensation due to other deceased seafarers under the Act.

The point for a family is that the recovery is not left entirely to them. There is a statutory route in which the Government does the recovering.

The Merchant Shipping Act, 2025 is Act No. 24 of 2025, assented on 18 August 2025. It came into force on 15 March 2026, vide notification S.O. 1244(E) dated 10 March 2026, published in the Gazette of India, Extraordinary, Part II, section 3(ii).

It consolidates and amends the law that had stood since 1958. If an agent, a manning company or an older advisory quotes you sections of the 1958 Act, check the current numbering before acting on it.

Repatriation cases fail on paperwork more often than on law. The Right to Information Act reaches the Indian side of the file.

1. The date on which the application made by / on behalf of
   Shri ......... , CDC no. ......... , seeking repatriation as an
   abandoned seafarer under section 91(1) of the Merchant Shipping
   Act, 2025 was received in your office.
2. The action taken on the said application and its present stage,
   with the name and designation of the dealing officer.
3. A copy of the rules made under the Merchant Shipping Act, 2025
   prescribing the extent and conditions referred to in section 91(2).
4. Whether the said seafarer has been treated as an abandoned
   seafarer within the meaning of section 3(1) of the said Act; if
   not, the reasons recorded.
5. The number of Indian seafarers repatriated as abandoned seafarers
   in the last one financial year, and the number of pending cases.

Address it to the Public Information Officer of the Directorate General of Shipping or of the Ministry concerned. Because the applicant may be outside India, the guide to filing an RTI from abroad covers the fee and identity questions. Track the thirty day clock under section 7 of the RTI Act; the AI RTI Drafter will format the application, the RTI Timeline Calculator runs the deadline, and the First Appeal Builder handles silence. The RTI Playbook sets out the escalation ladder.

An honest caveat: an RTI application is a records tool with a thirty day clock, and a crew without food does not have thirty days. Use the consular route and the emergency channels first, and use RTI in parallel to build the record of what was asked and when. The two are not alternatives.

Two months, under one of the three limbs. Section 3(1)© covers a ship owner who has unilaterally severed ties with the seafarer, including failure to pay contractual wages for a period of at least two months. But you may already qualify sooner under clause (a), failure to cover repatriation cost, or clause (b), being left without necessary maintenance and support.

Section 91(1) is worded as a duty: the Indian ambassador shall, on an application being made by the abandoned seafarer, provide for return to a proper return port and for necessary clothing and maintenance until arrival. The qualification is in section 91(2): the extent and conditions are as prescribed by rules made under the Act.

Not in an ordinary abandonment. Section 91(3) provides that for repatriation expenses other than excepted expenses, the ship owner or his agent shall not be entitled to recover from the seafarer any amount paid to the Central Government. Recovery from the seafarer is permitted only for excepted expenses under section 91(4).

Section 3 defines them as repatriation expenses incurred where the cause of the seafarer being left behind is desertion, absence without leave, imprisonment for misconduct, or discharge from the vessel on the grounds of misconduct. In those cases the seafarer and the ship owner are jointly and severally liable, and wages due may be applied towards the claim.

The proper return port, defined in section 3 as the port agreed on by the seafarer and employer in the agreement or otherwise, and in the absence of an agreement, the port where the seafarer was employed or joined the vessel.

Section 90 allows the Central Government, or an officer appointed by it, to recover the wages and compensation due from the master, ship owner or agent, in the same court and manner in which a seafarer's wages are recoverable, and to deal with them as with wages due to other deceased seafarers under the Act.

• The Merchant Shipping Act, 2025, Act No. 24 of 2025, assented 18 August 2025, in force 15 March 2026 vide notification S.O. 1244 dated 10 March 2026, Gazette of India Extraordinary Part II section 3 sub-section ii. Sections 3, 90 and 91. Full text on India Code at indiacode.gov.in
• The Right to Information Act, 2005, sections 6 and 7, full text at RTI Act 2005 on RTI Wiki

• How to file an RTI from abroad as an NRI
• Visa fraud recovery: embassy, MEA and money back
• Fake immigration consultancy scam: verify and recover
• NRI parents alone in India: emergency help guide

Reviewed by Dr. Shrawan Kumar Pathak. This page is general legal information, not legal advice. Statutory text quoted from Act No. 24 of 2025 as published on India Code. The rules prescribing the extent and conditions under section 91(2) were not verified here, and a live abandonment is an emergency: contact the nearest Indian mission and the Directorate General of Shipping first.