Minister to bring 38 bodies from Iraq today

Minister of state for external affairs Gen. V. K. Singh ( Retd) on Sunday left for Iraq to bring back the mortal remains of 38 Indians confirmed to have been killed by the ISIS in the war- torn country. The minister is expected to return with the bodies on Monday.

“The minister left at around 1 pm from the Hindon airbase and is expected to return with the bodies tomorrow,” a government official was quoted by news agencies as saying.

Thirty- nine Indian workers had gone missing in the Iraqi city of Mosul in June 2014. So far, 38 bodies’ identity has been established.

In order to conclusively verify the identity of the body suspected to be that of the 39th victim — Raju Kumar Yadav from Bihar — the government had recently sent a second DNA sample of Yadav’s brother to Baghdad. That is why the government had not confirmed Yadav’s death along with that of 38 others on March 20.

Gen. Singh will bring back the mortal remains of the slain Indian workers in a

special plane. His first stop on the way back would be Amritsar where 27 bodies of victims from Punjab and four from Himachal Pradesh would be handed over to their relatives. The aircraft will then travel to Patna and then to Kolkata. Of the 38 confirmed dead, 27 were from Punjab, four from Himachal Pradesh, five from Bihar and two from West Bengal. After the liberation of Mosul from ISIS last year, a massive search was launched for the missing Indians. It was finally confirmed they were killed by the ISIS and buried under a hillock at Badosh near Mosul. The 39 bodies were earlier exhumed after deployment of deep- penetration radars at the hillock. The DNA samples of 38 bodies fully matched with that of the blood relatives of the missing Indians. Presence of long hair and a kada ( iron bangle) — symbols of the Sikh faith — were the initial indications that these were indeed the bodies of the missing Indians.