Union Minister of State for External Affairs VK Singh and other officials who left for Iraq on April 1will going to bring back the mortal remains of 38 Indians on April 2, who were abducted and then killed by ISIS. The remains of 39th Indian worker are still being identified and work on the same is in progress. Minister after reaching India will travel to Amritsar, Patna and Kolkata to personally hand over the coffins to the respective families with evidence.
Indian Minister Singh has said that he is going to Mosul to get the mortal remains of 38 Indians; they will not get one man’s remains as his case is still pending. Raju Yadav, a native from Bihar, has not yet been identified even though his family member’s DNA sample was taken almost 15 days ago.
As many as 40 victims (who were construction workers) were taken hostage in 2014 when ISIS took control of the Mosul, a city in Iraq. Out of 40, one of them escaped posing as a Muslim from Bangladesh and mortal remains of 38 workers were exhumed from a mass grave in Badoosh, a village northwest of Mosul in Iraq and one case is still pending. Foreign minister Sushma Swaraj had said in the Parliament that they had about 98 percent match for remains of 38 workers.
Of the 39 victims, 27 victims hailed from Punjab, four from Himachal Pradesh, six from Bihar, and rest of the two are from West Bengal.
