A group of 40 Indian workers, most of them from Punjab, were taken hostage by terror outfit ISIS when it overran Iraq's second largest city Mosul in 2014
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj addresses a press conference over the death of 39 Indians who were kidnapped in Iraq, in New Delhi. Pic/PTI
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Tuesday told Parliament that all the 39 Indians abducted in Mosul are dead and their bodies have been recovered.
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The incident
A group of 40 Indian workers, most of them from Punjab, were taken hostage by terror outfit ISIS when it overran Iraq's second largest city Mosul in 2014. Of the 40 Indians, one Harjit Masih from Gurdaspur had managed to escape and had claimed to have witnessed the massacre of the others. But the government rejected his claim. Masih had escaped with a group of Bangladesh colleagues under the assumed name of "Ali" and was found by Indian officials at Erbil. The remaining 39 Indians were taken to Badoosh and killed. The bodies were buried near the village of Badush, northwest of Mosul, in an area that Iraqi forces recaptured last July. The killing was a "heinous crime carried out by Daesh terrorist gangs," Iraqi official Najiha Abdul-Amir al-Shimari said.
How were the dead bodies identified?
Iraqi authorities used radar to establish that the mound was a mass grave and then exhumed the bodies. Indian authorities then sent DNA samples from relatives of the missing workers. Sushma Swaraj said, "The bodies were brought to Baghdad for DNA testing. The DNA of 38 Indians have been matched. For verification of the bodies, DNA samples of their relatives were sent there. Four state governments -- Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, West Bengal and Bihar -- were involved in the process."
Sushma Swaraj. Pic/PTI
What Sushma Swaraj said in the Parliament
Sushma Swaraj on Tuesday said that the government did not keep anyone in the dark on the issue of 39 Indians killed in Iraq's Mosul. Swaraj said, "We had been saying that we neither have the evidence of them being alive nor the evidence of them being dead. We maintained this in 2014 and 2017 and we did not keep anyone in dark. We have not given false hopes to anyone. Some kin of the victims have questioned as to why they were not told about the deaths before the parliament. It is a parliamentary procedure to first inform the house, so it was my duty." Th EAM further said that it would have been a sin. had we handed over anybody's body claiming it to be those of our people, just for the sake of closing files.
What Sushma Swaraj said in July 2017
What Sushma Swaraj said about the lone survivor
Sushma Swaraj has dismissed the allegations that the lone survivor, Harjit Masih, who escaped from Iraq's Mosul, was harassed and kept in a protective custody. While addressing the media Swaraj said, "It is baseless that Harjit Masih was harassed, he was kept in protective custody. I had said this in Parliament earlier." Swaraj further said, "Masih is just an individual, he could claim 39 others are dead; but we are the Government, we cannot say this so easily. We have to be responsible."
Family members grieve by a portrait of one of the 39 Indian workers feared killed in Iraq, on the outskirts of Amritsar on Tuesday. Pic/PTI
Families of Indians killed in Iraq recount their struggle for information
Fighting off their tears, family members of the eight people from Amritsar and Tarn Taran districts confirmed dead in Iraq recounted their struggle over the past nearly four years for authoritative information about them.
That hope unexpectedly shattered on Tuesday.
Gurwinder Kaur's eyes were moist as she unsuccessfully tried to hold off her tears. A resident of Mehta village, she said her brother Manjinder Singh had gone to Iraq for employment. "One day, I got a telephone call from my brother from Iraq, informing he was stuck and it seemed difficult to come out of the unpredictable circumstances due to terrorist activities," she said.
The Union government, she said, offered her empathetic words over the years "but nothing was done by the government."
In October last year, relatives of the eight Punjabi-origin people had visited the Government Medical College in Amritsar to provide DNA samples for matching with the Indians stuck in the war-torn country, if required. At that time, they possibly did not know their biggest fear would come true within the next five months. "I had an intuition when the government asked us to go for DNA tests. I knew something serious has happened to my brother, but the government was not willing to (disclose the purpose of collecting the DNA samples). This news has crushed everything to the ground," Kaur said.
Balwinder Kaur from Manochahal village in Tarn Taran district too struggled to hold back her tears. Her son, Ranjit Singh, is among the 39 Indians declared dead. "Being a mother, it is difficult to bear the permanent separation from my son... Nobody from the Indian authority was in a position to tell me the plight of my son," she rued.
Gurmeet Kaur from Jallalusma village in Amritsar district said she was informed via a telephone call that her brother Gurcharan Singh was "stuck in bad circumstances" in Iraq. She said nobody informed her about whether he was dead or alive, and today she was told her brother was killed by ISIS.
Also Read: 39 Indians Missing In Iraq Killed, Says EAM Sushma Swaraj
-with agency inputs
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