Minister’s remark on 38 killed in Mosul angers kin
DEEP HURT Families allege the Indian embassy did not help victims despite repeated pleas
AMRITSAR: The families of some of the Punjab residents who were killed by the Islamic State in Iraq hit out at Union MOS General (retd) VK Singh on Tuesday for stating that the deceased were illegal immigrants and the Indian embassy in the war-torn country had no record of them.
Forty Indians, mostly from Punjab, were abducted by Islamic State (IS) near Mosul in Iraq in June 2014 and one of them managed to escape captivity by posing as a Muslim from Bangladesh. The remaining men were killed nearly a year ago.
The remains of the 38 men reached the country on Monday nearly four years after they went missing and were identified through DNA and forensic tests. The body of the 39th worker wasn’t brought back because there hasn’t been a complete DNA match.
After bringing back the victims’ remains on Monday, Singh had said: “it is a fact that they (the workers) went there (Iraq) through an illegal agent”. Alluding to the 2014 rescue of 46 nurses from Kerala, the minister said the nurses could be brought back home because their records were available with the embassy.
Reacting to Singh’s remark, Gurpinder Kaur, the sister of deceased Manjinder Singh , said: “Should we take it that the government did not acknowledge them as Indians?” .
“They were not killed because they were illegal immigrants, but because of their nationality, that is Indian. The IS militants could also have killed Bangladesh nationals, but they did not. They killed them because they were Indians,” she added.
She said it was the primary duty of the Indian ambassador in the country to immediately inform the government in India after news broke out that the situation had worsened in Iraq. “Unfortunately, he did not inform (about the workers) for two months,” she alleged.
“Although they went to Iraq illegally, information that they were in trouble was provided to the embassy. I kept contacting the ambassador over the phone from June 6 to June 15 from here 10 times in a day,” she added.
“Once the embassy had been informed about them, they cannot say that they did not have a record. Should not they have been rescued being Indian nationals in such a situation?” she asked.
Sarwan Singh, the brother of deceased Nishan Singh, said the minister’s statement was unfortunate. “On June 1, my brother told me over the phone that they have informed the embassy in Baghdad that they are in trouble and need to be rescued. An official of the embassy uttered rude words. He said, ‘Have you asked us before coming here?’ We in India and they in Iraq kept contacting Indian officials, but the efforts bore no fruits,” the Sangoana village resident said.
“As the majority of the victims are Punjabis and Sikhs, the Centre did not make efforts with dedication. If they were from any other state, they would have been saved like the nurses from Kerala,” he said and added,
Punjab BJP chief Shwait Malik however, said Singh’s comments were misinterpreted. “The Mos’s statement has been misinterpreted. He must have been upset as he was travelling with the dead bodies. We should understand his state of mind as well. The Centre has shown seriousness by sending an MOS to receive the mortal remains and now by sanctioning ₹10 lakh to the families.”