Families grapple with grief, anger
AMRITSAR/KAPURTHALA/PATNA: Alternating between hope and despair for the last four years, families of the 39 Indians, who went missing in Iraq in June 2014, faced their worst fear on Tuesday when external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj confirmed the death of the missing men.
For most families, many of whom had lost their sole breadwinner, the first reaction was grief laced with anger. The government, they said, had been giving them false hope.
Gurpinder Kaur, sister of Manjinder Singh who had galvanised the families of the missing men from the region, refused to believe that her brother was no more. “Sushma Swaraj has been saying all along that he was alive and they are tracing his location. Now, I don’t know what to believe.”
She said it was unfair that they learnt about this news from TV channels and not the government. “The families kept trying to call the office of Sushma Sawaraj, but no one picked up the phone,” she said.
The family of 55-year-old Pritpal Sharma, the only person from Malwa among the 39 Indians, said the government “had lied to the families for almost four years” by promising to bring the men home.
When Swaraj read out her statement in the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday morning, Sharma’s 18-year-old daughter Diksha at college, unaware of the news of her father’s demise. Diksha was in Class 7 when Sharma left for Iraq in 2011.
The family members of Gobinder Singh of Murar village in Kapurthala were informed by an official of the central government on Tuesday morning. The spokesman promised to bring the body back to India very soon, they said.
The sole breadwinner of the family, Gobinder went to work in a construction company in Iraq in 2013 to shore up his domestic finances after taking a loan of ₹1.5 lakh.
The last four years have been harsh on the family. Amarjeet says her elder son Amandeep Singh, 19, had to drop out after Class 12 and start working in a factory. She herself has taken to working as a household help to make ends meet.
This is the story of most of the families. Usha, widow of Surjit Singh alias Sonu, collapsed when she heard the news. “We are left with nothing now. We have no male members anymore in the family. My father, father-in-law and now my husband, all are dead. Where will I go now,” she said.
Usha said the family had borrowed heavily to send Sonu to Iraq. “We spent around ₹2.5 lakh and even mortgaged our house,” she wept. The family had been getting a stipend of ₹ 20,000 each month from the Punjab government, which stopped when the Congress government came to power last year.
Poonam Devi, the wife of Bidya Bhushan, from Bihar’s Bihar’s Sahasraon village had a similar story to tell. She said her husband and Santosh Kumar Sing, who stayed in the same village, had gone to Iraq together and were among the missing people. “They had gone through an agent after paying ₹1.35 lakh each. The amount was taken on loan from local money lenders and we have not been able to pay it back so far,” she added.
“It was on June 12, 2014 when I last talked to my brother. He called up from Mosul informing us that the workplace of the company he was working for was shifting to another location...,” said Bikram Singh alias Pappu, brother of Santosh.
Sandeep Kumar, 38, from Dhameta village in Kangra district of Himachal Pradesh, was among the 39 men confirmed dead on Tuesday. His widow Pushpa Devi wondered how she would educate their two children now. “We have been living on dole and hope,” she wept.
Seema Devi, wife of Sonu, from Chawinda Devi village, rued that the government continued to make ‘false promises’ without taking any concrete steps. Her only wish now was to see her husband one last time.