'I had been saying all 39 others were dead'
CHANDIGARH: Harjit Masih, the lone survivor who had managed to flee from ISIS captivity in Iraq in June 2014 following his abduction along with 39 other Indians there, on Tuesday said he had been maintaining for the last three years that all others had been killed.
"I had been saying for the last three years that all 39 Indians had been killed (by ISIS militants)," Masih on Tuesday said.
"I had spoken the truth," asserted Masih, resident of village Kala Afghana in Gurdaspur district of the northern Indian state of Punjab.
Masih was one of the 40 Indian workers abducted by ISIS militant outfit.
His statement came after External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Tuesday informed the Parliament that all the 39 Indian workers, abducted by ISIS in Iraq nearly three years ago, were killed and their bodies have been recovered.
Harjit Masih said they were killed in front of my eyes and I had been saying all these years, wondering why the government was not accepting what he had said earlier.
Giving details of the incident, Masih said that Indians were working at a factory in Iraq in 2014.
"But we were kidnapped by militants and kept hostage for some days," he said.
On the fateful day, they were made to sit on their knees and the militants then opened fire upon them.
"I was fortunate to have survived though a bullet hit my thigh and I fell unconscious," he said.
He, however, managed to return to India after giving a slip to the ISIS militants suffering gun wound.
As many as 39 Indians, who had gone to Iraq to earn their livelihood, had been missing since 2014.
Among them, several were from Amritsar, Gurdaspur, Hoshiarpur, Kapurthala and Jalandhar in Punjab.