Search Operations on to Find 39 Missing Indians: Iraq Embassy

Islamic State fighters in the northern city of Mosul, Iraq.

(Photo: AP)

Search operations are ongoing and there is high-level co-ordination between Iraqi and Indian authorities regarding the 39 missing Indians, the Iraqi Embassy said on Sunday.

The Embassy said that India has already sent two high-level senior delegations to Iraq to follow up the matter and that they have no information about them joining ISIS apart from what is published in the media.

Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan also said that knowing the intricacies of Iraq, he knows the Indian government is working tirelessly to rescue the Indians.

VK Singh said, “We have always said that till the time we don't get proof, no government can abandon its citizens.”

There is no credible information on the 39 Indians who went missing in Iraq since June 2014, Iraq’s envoy to India had said on Friday. In an exclusive interview to WION, Iraq’s Ambassador to India Fakhri Al-Issa said there’s no confirmation on whether the 39 are dead or alive.

Earlier, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said that Minister of State for External Affairs General VK Singh was told by unnamed sources during his visit to Erbil, Mosul and Baghdad that the missing Indians are probably in a jail in Badush, adding that after the fighting stops in the area, the whereabouts of the Indians can be known.

Differing from what Sushma Swaraj said the envoy told WION:

Personally, I have no information (about whether the Indians might be in Badush jail). No news is good news... I hope they are still alive.

Al-Issa feared that the Islamic State may have used the Indians as slave laborers or human shields.

The opposition raised the issue of 39 missing Indian nationals in Iraq for the past three years and asked the government to provide information about their fate in the parliament, on Wednesday.

In the Rajya Sabha, a Congress MP, Pratap Singh Baja asked, “Tell us where are our youths” and suggested that the government should have sent an all-party delegation along with the minister and "ensure that those people are either brought in or their parents and relatives should be told that they are no longer alive".

"Don't mislead the country and Parliament," he said.

(With inputs from PTI and ANI.)

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