From Pirate Captivity to Humanitarian Mission: One Engineer's Journey

Chirag Bahri was 28 years old and working as second engineer aboard the Marida Marguerite when six men in fast skiffs appeared on the horizon at noon on May 8, 2010. The chemical tanker was 120 miles off the coast of Oman, carrying benzene from India to Belgium through waters where Somali piracy had become routine. Bahri had made this passage through the Gulf of Aden twelve times before. He was about to be promoted. Then the pirates came.

The ship's defenses were minimal—razor wire strung along the rails and the crew's ability to maneuver. The Marguerite could manage 13 knots; the pirate skiffs moved at 25. They approached in the shadow of the ship's funnel, invisible until they were already firing. Two rocket-propelled grenades struck the vessel. Within fifteen minutes, six armed men had scaled the razor wire and climbed up pipes to reach the bridge. The crew of 22—nineteen Indians, two Bangladeshis, and one Ukrainian—was ordered to sit on the floor. Several wept. Others tried to reassure their shipmates that this was business, that the company would pay and they would be released soon. Bahri, terrified, thought he was going to die.

Two days later, the ship reached the Somali coast near Garacad. The original six pirates left and forty others came aboard. A man who spoke English began negotiating with the shipping company. He started by demanding fifteen million dollars. The crew remained on the bridge for twenty days, lying on the hard deck. Bahri and the other engineers had to maintain the engines in twelve-hour watches, escorted by guards who suspected every intercom phone was a satellite connection. The pirates were volatile—young boys to older men, all of them brutal. They fought over scraps of mutton. They chewed khat, a narcotic plant, and grew most dangerous in the evenings when their eyes turned red and their moods darkened.

After three weeks, the crew was moved to four cabins. Four months passed. Bahri was allowed to phone home four times in eight months, speaking Hindi so the pirates wouldn't understand. His mother could only cry. Government officials told his wife that one day he would come back. Then, at the end of August, the torture began. The pirates remained convinced that Bahri was hiding a satellite phone and using it to contact the navy. On September 9, they took him to the deck at dawn and hog-tied him—nylon rope binding his hands and legs so tightly he could not move millimeters, cable ties around his genitals. He lay in the sun for four hours. When they released him, he could not stand. His left hand was half-paralyzed for a month. The beatings continued with sticks and fists. He stopped sleeping.

By October, the ransom negotiations had resumed. The company agreed to five million dollars. On December 27, the money was airdropped into the sea. The pirates collected it in skiffs, divided it on board with logbooks and accounts, and left with bagfuls of cash. Bahri prepared the engines himself, refusing to use tugboats. He wanted to prove the pirates had not taken everything from him. The journey back to Oman took a week because the ship's hull was fouled from eight months at anchor. When Bahri reached the airport in Delhi, his brother-in-law told him his mother had died. She had died from stress during his captivity. His wife had left him while he was held hostage. He had no idea why.

The physical aftermath was severe. His back and head went into spasm. He could not sit still. Tests showed his sperm count had been reduced by the genital trauma. He had sleepless nights and nightmares. Some people told him his life was ruined. Some friends in shipping joked that he had been fed and hadn't worked for eight months. Their ignorance stung, but it also clarified something for him: no one understood what piracy actually was. No one was talking about it. So Bahri began to talk. He contacted families whose relatives were being held hostage. He spoke publicly about his experience. He completed his senior engineer's exams and returned to sea briefly on an Indian tanker hugging the coast—he could not face the Gulf of Aden. Then Roy Paul, an official with the International Transport Workers' Federation, offered him work with the Maritime Piracy Humanitarian Response Programme, which supported hostages and their families. Bahri said he wasn't qualified. Paul told him he already was.

Today, more than fifteen years later, Bahri still works in this field. Armed guards on ships reduced piracy after 2012, but the pirates remain active and families of captives still flounder. Some lose access to bank accounts frozen in their husband's name. Some lose gas connections. Some receive no information at all. Bahri has been working with the families of eleven crew members from the oil tanker Honour 25, held for five months by Somali pirates. He has also supported seafarers trapped by the war in Iran. He has remarried and has two young children. Using his own experience to help others has been healing, he says. When he meets seafarers and their families, he brings smiles to their faces. If he had not done this work, he would still be sailing, still blaming himself, still unable to understand that the situation was wrong, not him. His son asks about shipping. If his son wanted to work at sea one day, Bahri says, he would support that.