Normal procedure: govt

NEW DELHI: The Centre on Sunday said that asking relative soft he 39 Indians who went missing in Mosul, Iraq, three years ago, to undergo DNA tests is a normal procedure for identification.

India and Iraq maintain that the 39 Indian nationals are alive and that authorities in both countries are committed to continue their search for them on this assumption. In July this year, external affairs minister Su sh ma S war aj had said in a statement in the Parliament that she will not declare the 39 Indians dead without concrete evidence. “It is a sin to declare a person dead without concrete evidence. I will not do this sin,” Swaraj had said in a statement in the Lok Sabha.

India has asked Iraq for help in after Iraqi forces recaptured Mosul. It must be under lined that Iraq’s foreign minister Ibrahim al-Eshaiker al-Jafari is also on record as saying that Baghdad does not have “substantial evidence” to prove that the missing Indians are dead. ANI