4 min readHyderabadJun 11, 2026 11:26 PM IST
First published on: Jun 11, 2026 at 08:57 PM IST
In her last conversation with her husband, Suresh Patnala, Bhargavi Suresh told him, “Please be careful.” He replied, “I am careful.” This was on June 9. Two days later, Bhargavi woke up to the news that Patnala had gone missing off the coast of Oman.
The 44-year-old marine engineer from Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, was among the three Indian crew members who died in a United States military strike on a commercial vessel, on MT Settebello, off the Oman coast on June 9.
Speaking to The Indian Express, Bhargavi, 39, said, “I have two young children who are 10 and 13. Who will now look after them? I am a homemaker. I can’t go to work. How will I bring them up?”
In their last conversation, Patnala had spoken about the “growing tension” in the region. “He was aware that there had been other attacks which had killed people around him. He was hopeful that he would come back,” Bhargavi said.
Relatives gathered at their home in Visakhapatnam said she has been slipping in and out of consciousness. “She faints most of the time as she has been crying non-stop,” a relative said.
Bhargavi said there were times when she wanted her husband to leave everything behind and return home. “But he stayed on the job because he wanted a good life for us. Now all our dreams are shattered,” she said.
Her husband’s salary was the family’s sole source of income, she said. “I worked for six years in a private company before I decided to marry and have children. I cannot find a job. The company which took him there should pay for the education of my children,” she said, adding through tears: “A good education is necessary.”
The family said no one had informed them when his body would be brought home. “We are waiting for instructions from the company and the Union government,” Bhargavi said.
She said her husband had been a marine engineer for 15 years. “It was his passion. I can only take comfort in the fact that he was doing the job he loved.”
Patnala graduated from the the Visakha Institute of Engineering and Technology before studying marine engineering. He was due to return to Mumbai and then travel to Visakhapatnam to celebrate his 15th wedding anniversary with his wife on June 24.
“He had been at sea for over five months and was looking forward to coming home. He had got approval for furlough. He was supposed to come home to his family,” Bhargavi said.
She said that on Wednesday night, she received a text message from a crew member saying that the ship had been attacked, there was a major fire on board, and that her husband and two others were missing.
“I hoped against hope that my husband would be found alive and spent the night calling his office in Dubai and elsewhere, but nobody had any information. I think everybody else knew except me, because they cannot confirm anything until a body is recovered as per their rules,” she said.
“Late at night, I came to know that there was a rescue mission, and I still held on to hope. This afternoon, I came to know that the bodies of the three men had been recovered. I request the Centre to step in and repatriate his body as soon as possible,” she said.
The 44-year-old marine engineer from Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, was among the three Indian crew members who died in a US military strike on a commercial vessel. (Special Arrangement) 
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