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When Vishal Sharma, an experienced merchant seaman, arrived in London from India in November 2017, he was looking forward to a good job on a Belgian tanker, the MT Waasmunster, assisting engineers. He had a 15-month contract and a transit visa, enabling him to travel to Milford Haven in Wales, where the 174-metre vessel was anchored.
But in a last-minute change of plan, his Mumbai agent told him to head to Southwick in West Sussex, England, to board a scallop trawler, the Noordzee.
Something was wrong, he felt, but his agent said he would be dropped at the tanker. Sharma tried to discuss it with the captain of the Noordzee. “I told him, ‘This is not my ship. I am not a fisherman.’” He could no longer reach his agent, as there was no wifi network onboard.
“I felt alone and afraid,” says Sharma, 32.
At sea, there was no easy way out. He was threatened with deportation if he did not work, he says.
“They told me, ‘We will call the police, you don’t have the right documents, you will go to jail.’”
“It is very dangerous work,” he says. “You can’t argue with the captain, when the ship is rolling and pitching. Anything could happen. You are at sea. It is scary.”
For the next three weeks, he worked 18 to 20 hours a day, without safety equipment or proper meals, he claims. He had little access to the bathroom and developed urinary problems, he says.
His ordeal ended after he was transferred on to another boat, where other migrant fishers had reported being exploited and mistreated to police. When the boat docked at Portsmouth, immigration officers were waiting and Sharma and the others were taken to a police station. “The police said to me, can you explain everything that has happened to you? They said, ‘We are with you. You are in the UK, a safe country.’”
Sharma was recognised as a victim of modern slavery by the Home Office and agreed to help police by giving evidence in a criminal case. “I wanted to stay in the UK until I got justice,” he says.
Sharma was one of 35 migrant workers to appear on a BBC documentary, Disclosure: Slavery at Sea, which broadcast in 2024. Each worked on vessels owned by TN Trawlers and its sister companies, owned by the Nicholson family, based in Annan, Scotland and were recognised as victims of modern slavery between 2012 and 2020.
But justice has been elusive. TN Trawlers and its associated companies were the subject of two lengthy criminal investigations, but no cases of human trafficking or modern slavery have come to trial, although some of the men waited years to give evidence.
The Crown Office in Scotland acknowledges that Sharma is a victim of a crime. But the criminal investigation into what happened to him was dropped after he could not identify the perpetrators in a video.
Now, after years of helping the authorities in Scotland, Sharma is facing deportation back to India, where he fears his life is in danger. Word got back to his agents in Mumbai that he had spoken to the police, he claims. His father was assaulted by the agents, he says, and he has received death threats. He has suffered bouts of depression.
While in this legal limbo, he has built a life for himself in Bradford. He worked fitting shop fronts and married Sukhdeep, 27, a business student and Indian national. In December 2020, they had a son, Humraj.
“She’s my wife, my best friend, she has given me moral support,” he says.
In a letter sent to Sharma and his family in February, the Home Office rejected their asylum claims and told them to leave the UK. It said: “It is considered that any subjective fear you may have of returning to India is not objectively well-founded.”
Joy Gillespie, the CEO of Survivors of Human Trafficking in Scotland, an NGO that has supported many of the 35 migrant fishers who appeared on the BBC’s documentary, says: “These men have done everything they could to help make a prosecution happen. But when it doesn’t work out, they are of no value and they are left in the lurch. If we are to bring these difficult trafficking prosecutions, we have to be more victim focused and give them our support.”
Chris Williams, of the International Transport Workers Federation (ITF), says fishing is a “blind spot” for potential labour exploitation of migrant workers. The system ties them to one vessel, where they are at the mercy of the skipper.
“Unfortunately, what happened to Vishal and others could happen again,” Williams says. The ITF is calling for fishers to be included in the Fair Work Agency, a new state enforcement agency being proposed in the government’s employment rights bill going through parliament.
Stephanie Hill and Carolin Ott, solicitors for Leigh Day, are investigating a number of claims for other exploited migrant fishers.
“We are concerned that the exploitation of migrant fishers and seafarers for the purposes of forced labour and other forms of modern slavery are not being properly investigated by the police and the Home Office, who have a duty to investigate instances and risks of trafficking and forced labour,” they say.
On Sharma’s case, a spokesperson for the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service says: “The case was carefully considered and a decision was taken that we could not prosecute due to insufficient evidence. The findings of an independent review supported the original decision. Further areas of investigation were identified and are under consideration.”
A spokesperson for the Home Office says the government is determined to tackle “the scourge of modern slavery” but adds: “The right to claim asylum in the UK is an entirely separate process from the support an individual may be entitled to as a victim of modern slavery.”
The Guardian was told that TN Trawlers no longer exists. A legal representative of the TN group said they did not wish to comment on this article.
Last year, a spokesperson for TN Group told the BBC it disputed suggestions that workers were mistreated or were victims of modern slavery.
The spokesperson said it always provided food and accommodation to workers and that they were “always free to come and go when ashore”.
“The overwhelming experience of our workers was that they were well treated and well remunerated. We dispute many of the accounts put to us, in some cases over a decade on.
“We absolutely refute any allegation of modern slavery or human trafficking and our many testimonials and long-term employees are testament to that.”
