Families learn of death on TV, in shock

Chandigarh: On a day when the government confirmed the death of their love ones in Parliament and not in person, grieving family members of 39 Indians killed in Iraq by the ISIS said they felt betrayed by the government which kept giving them false assurances since 2014 and expressed anguish over learning about the deaths from TV.

Relatives of most of the victims got the tragic news through TV reports on external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj’s statement in Parliament that all 39 Indians in ISIS’ captivity were dead and their bodies had been recovered.

When Manjeet Kaur, 40, wife of one of the victims from Punjab, heard the news, she said her world crashed. “Bahut umeed sigi ajj tak... par sari umeed khatam ho gayi... (I had a lot of hope till today, but now there is none),” she said in a choked voice. Her husband Devinder Singh left home in 2012 for Iraq and talked to her last on June 15, 2014.

Gurpinder Kaur, sister of another victim Manjinder Singh, said, “Our fate is like that of the victims of the 1984 anti-Sikh violence who are still being deprived of justice.”

She accused the government of being insensitive by not sharing the information with them personally before it was flashed on TV. “We should have been contacted as soon as they received the information. Had that been done it would not have been such a huge blow. We feel betrayed from all sides,” she said, alleging that attempts to contact Ms Swaraj’s office in the afternoon did not yield much.

Sarwan, an Amritsar resident whose 31-year-old brother Nishan was among those killed, said, “Now after four years, they are making such a shocking statement.”

“It is the government’s biggest failure. Most of the missing Indians were from Punjab. When the government could save nurses from Kerala why did it completely fail in saving other Indians?” he asked.

Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh joined the victims’ families in condemning the delay in confirmation of the deaths and said that these should have been announced earlier. “This (the deaths) was known much earlier,” he said.

Of the 39 dead Indians, 27 were from Punjab, four from Himachal Pradesh, five from Bihar and two from West Bengal.

Most of the Punjabi victims were from Amritsar, Gurdaspur, Hoshiarpur, Kapurthala and Jalandhar.

Harjit Masih, the lone survivor who had managed to flee from ISIS captivity in June 2014, reacted to Ms Swaraj’s statement by claiming that the government has confirmed what he had been saying for years.

“I have been saying for the last three years that all 39 Indians had been killed,” said Mr Masih, a resident of village Kala Afghana in Punjab’s Gurdaspur district.

Mr Masih had returned to India and given an account of what he claimed was the cold-blooded execution of his compatriots. But the government had rejected his claim.

On Tuesday, Ms Swaraj reemphasised that Mr Masih’s account on the massacre of 39 Indians was not correct.

Reacting to the complaints of victims’ kin, Ms Sushma Swaraj said that her ministry never kept the families in the dark or lied to the nation. “Some family members asked why I informed Parliament, and not the families first. I had promised earlier to disclose this to Parliament first if the House is in session,” she said.