New Delhi:
On a nippy March morning in Delhi, 45-year-old Mehtab Jahan sits in a blue
salwar kameez, a shawl wrapped around her to head on a pavement in Delhi outside the offices of the Shipping Ministry.
Like nearly 10 others around her, she is here to ask the government for help in securing the release of 17 Indians on board the MT Royal Grace, a Nigeria-owned tanker that was taken hostage a year ago by pirates off the coast of Somalia.
Mehtab Jahan has travelled to Delhi from Allahabad. "My son is 27 years old. He has two little children who miss him and are constantly asking about their father. Nothing I say can reassure them," she says.
The only way sailors' families can talk to them is through a negotiator via a satellite phone. Some of the families last spoke to the sailors in December.
Rajesh Kumar's brother is 24 and works as a cadet on the ship, which is owned by Nigeria. "When we meet officers from the Shipping Ministry, they tell us to go to the Ministry of External Affairs. And they tell us to speak to the Shipping Ministry. The fate of our young boys hangs in the balance."
Mehtab Jahan says, "This time we will sit for as long as it takes to get answers. Even if that means we have to die here."
(
Names of the hostages have not been revealed per the request of their families.)