The government has said legal procedures are under way to bring back the remains of the 39 Indians who went missing in Iraq in 2014. External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj had announced on Tuesday that all the 39 Indians were confirmed to have been killed by ISIS in Mosul.
The government has announced Minister of State for External Affairs V.K. Singh would travel to Iraq to bring back the remains. V.K. Singh himself said the legal procedures would take around 10 days. Most of the victims hailed from Punjab and were working on development projects in Mosul.
The announcement by Swaraj had led to an uproar, with the opposition Congress claiming the government had misled the nation on the fate of the missing Indians. In 2017, Swaraj had claimed that she wouldn't comment on their fate without any evidence.
While expressing condolences over the deaths of the Indians, Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh said their fate had been known much earlier. An MLA of AAP in Punjab, Kanwar Sandhu, demanded that Swaraj resign for having misled the families of the victims.
Congress leader in the Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad demanded that both Central and state governments provide assistance for the victims' families and give government jobs for the members.
Dismissing the criticism, V.K. Singh claimed it was the “job of the opposition to take things in the wrong way."
(With agency inputs)