39 Indians abducted by IS in Iraq dead: Sushma

TRAGIC END New Delhi’s sustained efforts prove futile, dashing families’ hopes

NEWDELHI: The 39 Indian workers who had been kidnapped in Iraq in June 2014 by the Islamic State are dead, external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj told Parliament on Tuesday.

The minister said that their bodies were found in a mass grave in Badush village in the northern part of that country, and that DNA tests had provided incontrovertible proof establishing the identity of 38 of the 39 missing Indians. The sample of the 39th man — Raju Yadav from Bihar — was still being tested and had shown a partial match, she added.

Though Swaraj’s announcement brought closure to one of the longest search operations in India’s history for missing citizens, some of the family members of the victims said they felt “betrayed” by the government for “keeping them in the dark”.

It also sparked a war of words between the government and the Opposition, with senior Congress leaders blaming the Centre for giving “false hopes” to the families of the victims for all these years, pointing to comments made by Swaraj in Parliament in 2014 and 2017 that the Indians Iraqi search operations lead to a where residents say bodies are buried by the Islamic State

A deep penetration radar is used to establish that the mound is a

The DNA samples from relatives of the missing men from across four Indian states are sent to Iraq

return confirmed matches for 38 of the missing men. There is a 70% match for the 39th Indian

ID cards, long hair, kada and non-iraqi footwear help in

A plane carrying the mortal remains of the 39 Indians will first go to then to and could not be declared dead.

Forty Indians working in a factory in Mosul had been captured by militants in the Iraqi city of Mosul four years ago.

One man, Harjit Masih,managed to escape, and had said that he had seen the others killed by a firing squad. Masih had said that he had been shot in the leg in the mass execution and had been seemingly left for dead by the militants. The government consistently refused to believe his claim on the grounds that the circumstances of his escape did not check out.

Swaraj again said that Masih’s narration of how events had transpired in Iraq was false, and that