The chief engineer aboard the cargo ship Dali — the vessel that struck and destroyed Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge in March 2024 — has entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with the federal government, the Justice Department announced Thursday.
Karthikeyan Deenadayalan, a citizen of India, admitted that he knowingly failed to report a hazardous condition to the U.S. Coast Guard. Specifically, he was aware that the 984-foot ship was relying on an unsafe fuel supply pump but did not disclose that information to authorities. Under the terms of the agreement, Deenadayalan will serve 36 months of probation. If he fulfills all requirements, he will not face criminal prosecution.
The collapse of the bridge killed six construction workers and, according to the Justice Department, caused at least $5 billion in damage as well as significant harm to the environment.
Last month, federal prosecutors indicted two foreign operators and a shoreside superintendent in connection with the disaster. The Dali’s operators — Synergy Marine Pte Ltd, headquartered in Singapore, and Synergy Maritime Pte Ltd, based in Chennai, India — along with Radhakrishnan Karthik Nair, 47, an Indian national who served as technical superintendent for the vessel at both companies, were all charged. Prosecutors believe Nair is currently in India.
In a statement, the two Synergy companies said they intend to fight the charges. Synergy Marine expressed concern that the Justice Department has kept the Dali’s crew members in the United States for more than two years, calling it unjust given what it described as “evidence that their actions were timely and reasonable under the circumstances.”
Prosecutors allege that the defendants used a flushing pump — not designed to automatically restart after a blackout — to supply fuel to two of the ship’s four generators. Without a functioning fuel supply, the generators could not operate. The indictment claims that had proper fuel supply pumps been in use, the ship would have recovered power in time to safely pass under the bridge.
The National Transportation Safety Board previously determined that a single loose wire in the ship’s electrical system caused a circuit breaker to trip unexpectedly, setting off a chain of events that led to two blackouts and the vessel losing both propulsion and steering.
Maryland reached a $2.25 billion settlement last month with Grace Ocean Private Limited and Synergy Marine Pte Ltd, the owner and operator of the Dali. However, the state has not yet resolved its claims against the ship’s builder, Hyundai Heavy Industries.
