Mauritius Oil Spill: Captain and First Officer Get 20-Month Jail Terms

The MV Wakashio, a Japanese-owned but Panamanian-flagged vessel with Captain Sunil Kumar Nandeshwar has admitted he had been drinking alcohol as cargo ship ran aground in July 2020, spilling more than 1,000 tons of fuel into the Indian Ocean.

The captain and first officer of a cargo ship that crashed into a coral reef off Mauritius, resulting in the Indian Ocean archipelago’s worst ever environmental disaster, were handed 20-month prison sentences on Monday.

The Wakashio cargo ship was sailing from Singapore to Brazil when it struck the coral reef on July 25, 2020. Some 1,000 tons of oil began spilling into the pristine waters on August 6, prompting the Mauritius government to declare a state of “environmental emergency.”

The vessel’s captain, Sunil Kumar Nandeshwar, who was convicted by a court in the capital Port Louis last week, admitted drinking during an onboard birthday party.

He and first officer, Hitihanillage Subhoda Janendra Tilakaratna, were found guilty of “endangering safe navigation.”

“The captain and his second in command were irresponsible and did not deliver as they should on their ‘navigational duties,’” the magistrate said Monday.

The MV Wakashio was sailing from Singapore to Brazil with 3,800 metric tons of fuel oil and 200 metric tons of diesel onboard when it ran into the reef off the southeast coast of Mauritius.

During the trial, the captain said he had given instructions to approach Mauritian waters in order to gain access to a mobile phone network so that crew members could contact their families.

“The sea was bad, but the visibility was clear and it was safe to navigate. … At one point, the ship could not move and had touched the sea floor,” Nandeshwar said.

“Since I had had a few drinks, it did not seem worthwhile to intervene and it did not occur to me that we were sailing that close.”

The two men were taken into custody in August 2020, and have been behind bars since then.