MEA condemns the Black Sea attack on MV Royad Mammadov that killed two

India on Tuesday condemned the attack on the commercial vessel MV Royad Mammadov in the Black Sea that killed two foreign seafarers. The Ministry of External Affairs said some crew members, including Indian nationals, were injured. The Embassy of India in Romania said all three Indians on board were safe. One of them was injured and was receiving treatment. The embassy said it was in contact with the hospital and was extending support.

The embassy's first note, posted on Monday, said it had learnt of an attack that day on the vessel, that preliminary information put the dead at two foreign nationals, and that some crew were being treated in Romania. It said three Indians were among the crew. A later note confirmed the three were safe. ANI described the ship as a Turkish grain vessel that caught fire and sank, and said eleven other crew members were rescued, among them Azerbaijani and Indian citizens. Those rescue and flag details are from the agency's account, not from a casualty list published by the MEA.

The ministry's condemnation was not limited to this hull. It said India was gravely concerned about strikes on commercial shipping. That sentence sits next to a separate incident the same week: eleven Indian sailors were hurt on Sunday when a projectile hit the Panama-flagged MT On Peace in the Strait of Hormuz, off Oman. Two theatres, two ships, Indian crew on both. The Black Sea case is the one with deaths, and the dead are not Indian. The Hormuz case is the one with the larger Indian injury count.

Romania is the medical end of the Black Sea incident. Bulgaria opened a search after a cargo ship sank in a drone strike in the same sea, a report carried earlier on Tuesday. The embassy in Bucharest has not said the Royad Mammadov is that ship, and the public notes do not give a position, a weapon, or an attacking party. Ukraine has said a Russian drone sank a ship in Romanian waters. Moscow has not, in the notes available here, accepted or denied the strike on this named vessel. The verifiable chain stops at the embassy, the MEA, and the agency description of a fire and a sinking.

For Indian shipping the practical distinction is medical and consular. Three nationals, one injured, treatment in Romania, embassy in contact. That is a closed welfare report. It is not a closed investigation. No owner, insurer or flag state has published a damage survey in the accounts used here. No port of loading or discharge has been confirmed beyond the description of the ship as a grain carrier.

The MEA's wider line, concern over strikes on commercial shipping, is the policy sentence that ties Hormuz and the Black Sea together in one week. It does not assign either attack. It does put New Delhi on record against both, on the same day it confirmed its own crew were alive.

What is still missing, and what would change the account, is a named attacker, a coordinate, and a flag-state report on whether the ship sank or was towed. Until then the firm facts are the name of the vessel, two foreign dead, three Indians safe, one of them hurt, and a condemnation from Delhi.

The embassy's two notes, a preliminary count and a later confirmation, are the consular spine of the story. The first established the attack, two foreign dead, injured crew in Romania, and three Indian names on the crew list. The second established that those three were safe and that one was in treatment. Between the notes, the welfare fact changed from unknown to closed. The attack fact did not. No later MEA line withdrew the condemnation or named a responsible party.

Grain ships in the Black Sea have been a wartime target set since 2022, and a named sinking in Romanian waters was already part of Tuesday's public record before the MEA spoke. Linking this hull to that strike is an inference the embassy has not made. Treating them as the same event would put a weapon and a flag on a report that currently has a ship name, a fire, a sinking in one agency account, and a hospital in Romania. The safer reading, and the one the documents support, keeps those layers separate until a coast guard or an owner confirms them.