“My husband just became the scapegoat,” Ritu Pant said, defending her husband, Ajay Pant, the Indian captain of an oil tanker seized by British commandos in the English Channel.
“He didn’t know what had happened to him… MV Smyrtos, the oil tanker that was captained by Pant, was stopped on June 14 in an operation involving British commandos who descended from a helicopter onto the vessel. The vessel had left Russia’s Ust-Luga port on June 5 and was sailing towards Egypt’s Port Said, according to MarineTraffic. It was carrying roughly 98,000 tonnes of oil when British forces intercepted it.
The mission was the first of its kind led by Britain and was described by then-prime minister Keir Starmer as a “blow to Russia”. His wife, however, said a captain’s job is primarily to ensure that the cargo reaches its destination safely. “The master’s responsibility in any vessel is to just get the cargo safely to its destination,” she said, AFP reported. Ritu said her husband sounded devastated when she first spoke to him after his arrest. “He was broken and he was just crying,” she said. He just said, ‘I am in jail, please take me out’,” she was quoted as saying by AFP.
The Indian government has been keeping a close watch on the case through the Indian High Commission in London, according to a statement released in June. In a letter to Uttarakhand chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami, the High Commission shared an update on Pant’s case, according to an official release reported by news agency PTI.
