We weren’t willing to give up on them without any concrete proof, says General VK Singh on 39 Indians missing in Iraq's Mosul
New Delhi, March 21: As soon as External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Tuesday dipped with pain and anguish informed Lok Sabha about the death of 39 Indians who were missing in Iraq's Mosul since 2014, the opposition created disruption and started playing dirty political tricks and tried to defame Central Government. MoS External Affairs General V.K. Singh lambasted opposition and said we would have announced 39 Indians dead long back but we didn’t as we weren’t willing to give up on them.
General V.K. Singh posted a tweet on micro-blogging site Twitter and said, “Some well wishers seem outraged that we didn’t announce in 2014 about the death of 39 Indians in Iraq. Yes, we didn’t. Because we weren’t willing to give up on them.”
He said, “Now I understand why they are outraged. Because we didn’t fall in line and did what they would have done. While we were looking for proof of life in a war torn country, it was always the easier choice to declare them dead. But we owe it to their families and to the nation to have looked for them.” “We are sorry that we lost them. But we don’t regret trying,” General V.K. Singh concluded.
Earlier in the day, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj declared that 39 Indians, who were missing in Iraq's Mosul since 2014, are dead. However, Swaraj had earlier refused to declare them dead without concrete proof, saying this would be amount to "committing a sin". "Declaring anyone dead without proof is a sin and I won't commit a sin," Swaraj had said in the Lok Sabha, responding to allegations that she was "misleading the house" on whether the Indians were alive.
Sushma Swaraj had then asserted that it was the government's duty to keep looking for the Indians, given that so far, "there are no bodies, no bloodstains, no list, no ISIS videos."
The group of Indian labourers, mostly from Punjab, was taken hostage by ISIS when it overran Iraq's second largest city Mosul in 2014. The workers were trying to leave Mosul when they were intercepted and taken hostage by the ISIS fighters.
The Government of India had repeatedly said that all efforts were on to find the Indians and, without any credible information, the workers would be considered alive. One of the captured Indians, Harjit Masih from Gurdaspur, had managed to escape and had claimed to have witnessed the massacre of the others. The government in Iraq too had earlier expressed its inability to confirm if Indians taken hostage by the ISIS in Mosul three years ago were alive or dead.