39 Indians killed by ISIS in Mosul

T he 39 Indians abducted in Iraq in 2014 were killed by Islamic State terrorists and buried in a mass grave, the government told Parliament on Tuesday, setting off a row with the Opposition, which accused it of being insensitive for not informing the victims' families first.

As many as 40 Indians were abducted by terrorist organisation ISIS in June 2014 from Mosul in Iraq but one of them escaped by posing as a Muslim from Bangladesh, external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj told the Rajya Sabha.

The minister said the mortal remains, which were exhumed from a mass grave in Badush, will be brought back to India on a special plane and handed over to their relatives.

“I had said that I will not declare anyone dead without substantive proof... today I have come to fulfil that commitment... I had said that closure will be done with full proof. And when we will, with a heavy heart, give the mortal remains to their kin, it will be a kind of closure,” she said.

While it was not immediately known exactly when these 39 Indians were killed, their bodies were recovered from Badush — a village northwest of Mosul, and their identities established through DNA testing, she said.

Of the 40 Indians, Harjit Masih from Punjab’s Gurdaspur had managed to escape and claimed to have witnessed the massacre of the others.

— AP Relatives mourn holding a portrait of Gurcharan Singh, one of the Indians whose bodies were found buried northwest of Mosul, in Jalal Usma village in Punjab on Tuesday.