39 Indians in Iraq: wait for families continue

Two years after thirty-nine Indian citizens were believed to have been kidnapped by the Islamic State fighters in Iraq, their families are demanding the government to spell out what concrete steps it has taken to bring them back.

The 39 Indians were part of a group of South Asian workers who were kidnapped in the second week of June 2014, in Mosul from a construction site run by a firm named, Tareq Nur Al Huda.

They called home for the last time on June, 15 2014, a few days after Mosul was taken over by the Islamic State (IS). A leading daily from Chandigarh quoted a resident of Bhoewal village near Amritsar as saying“I have requested a meeting with External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj. But have not received any positive response from the Ministry as of now.”

The government has never been in direct negotiation over the release of the 39 men and has not confirmed if they have any concrete evidence they are alive. “Various third party sources give us hope that they may be alive,” a senior diplomatic source was quoted by the daily.

A few days after June 15, 2014, 55 Bangladeshi workers were released by the IS and one Indian worker also managed to escape. Harjit Masih, the Indian who managed to escape, claimed that the rest of the team was executed by the IS shortly after they were kidnapped.

But, India’s Foreign Affairs minister  Sushma Swaraj in her annual press conference of May 31, 2015, announced that she had been told by friendly countries in West Asia that the men were alive.