Indians killed in Mosul: V.K. Singh off to Iraq to fly in bodies

Minister says military plane will fly to Baghdad as soon as Indian Embassy gives approval

March 31, 2018 09:49 pm | Updated 09:49 pm IST - New Delhi

A file photo of External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and her deputies, M.J. Akbar and General V.K Singh, after meeting  the kin of 39 Indians killed in Iraq .

A file photo of External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and her deputies, M.J. Akbar and General V.K Singh, after meeting the kin of 39 Indians killed in Iraq .

Minister of State for External Affairs Gen (Retd) V.K. Singh will travel to Iraq on Sunday morning aboard a special flight to bring back the remains of 39 men kidnapped by the IS in Mosul in 2014. They were declared dead last week.

Mr. Singh is scheduled to fly to Amritsar on April 2, hand over the remains to families from Punjab and Himachal Pradesh and then will fly to Kolkata and later to Patna.

“I am going on a sad note to bring back our people killed by the IS,” Mr. Singh told The Hindu .

Mr. Singh visited Iraq three times in the past year, even to Mosul, to locate the men. In a statement to Parliament on March 20, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj first confirmed that an agency in Iraq had been able to match the DNA of at least 38 of the 39 men who had gone missing four years ago, with remains found in a mass grave in Mosul, which had been held by the IS terror group from June 2014 to July 2017. Ms. Swaraj had come under severe criticism for failing to inform the families before making the announcement in Parliament. The Congress accused the government of giving the families “false hope”, a charge the government denied.

Mr. Singh’s mission is seen as an attempt to show the government’s commitment to taking the case of the missing men to the end, despite the tragic outcome.

The men, construction labourers working in Mosul, are believed to have been taken captive by IS terrorists in mid-June of 2014, and while the government is yet to confirm details of their death, one man claiming to be an eyewitness, Harjit Masih, said the men were shot dead by their captors. Mr. Masih escaped to India, along with a group of Bangladeshi labourers, but the government has refused to accept his version.

At a joint press conference in Baghdad, also on March 20, the Iraqi Martyrs Foundation and the Indian Ambassador to Iraq Pradeep Rajpurohit confirmed the deaths, saying the remains had been found at “Badoush village” on the outskirts of Mosul and had been matched with blood samples provided by their families in India.

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