Indian captain of cargo ship gets 3-year probation

In handing out a three-year probationary sentence to K B Singh, captain of an ill-fated cargo ship, a judge in Anchorage, Alaska, took into consideration a key factor.

Singh himself confessed to a lie he had entered in the ship's log book.

Singh was captain of the cargo ship that was caught in bad winter weather off Alaska's Aleutian Islands and broke into two.

The Selendang Ayu was hauling soybeans from Tacoma to Xiamen, China, when an engine malfunction developed on December 7 last year. The 221-meter vessel drifted and then ran aground on December 8 off Unalaska Island.

Singh confessed within a few days of the disaster, before anyone suspected anything.

Singh's fault was that he had lied to the investigators that the ship had drifted without engine power for 11 hours.

But soon he admitted that it had gone without power for 13 hours.

According to the investigators, who had initially weighed a criminal complaint against Singh, the ship lost engine power in a storm about 10 am on December 7.

Singh and the crew tried to restart the engine and radioed the Coast Guard for help only after they realised -- 13 hours since the engine had died -- that they just could not revive it.

The accident led to the spilling of spilling more than 1.2 million litres of fuel into a wildlife sanctuary near Unalaska Island.

Singh, who has been in Alaska since the cargo ship disaster, is now free to return to India, his lawyer Michael Chalos said. 

In his negotiations with federal authorities, Chalos had told them that Singh, 52, has been a captain for 17 years and had a unblemished record.

He had also been known as a conscientious officer.

Singh pleaded guilty to just one count in a federal court -- lying and Judge Ralph Beistline gave him a probationary sentence on Wednesday.

It is unlikely he would be captain a ship in the North American waters.

Six crewmen, five of them from India, died when a US Coast Guard helicopter trying to ferry them to safety crashed.

The Seattle Times had published the reaction of many relatives in India who said the coast guards had not acted fast and resolutely to rescue the men because they were not whites.

But rescue officials immediately argued against the complaints, citing the risk their men had taken in the crippling weather.

Officials said last week most of the oil had been cleared despite bad weather and the task would be completed by mid April.