Lawyers for the asylum seekers, who were held in windowless rooms for 21 hours a day, say the detained group were instructed on how to use lifeboats to return to India. The asylum seekers were subsequently taken to Australia and then onto Nauru, where they remain in detention.
The conditions faced by asylum seekers at Australian-run detention centres on Nauru and Manus Island have been severely criticised by doctors and human rights advocates. On Saturday, Iranian asylum seeker Hamid Kehazaei died in a Brisbane hospital after contracting septicaemia on Manus Island from a cut on his foot.