How Delhi tracked down the bodies of 39 Indians who went missing in Iraq

Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj said in Parliament on Tuesday that the 39 Indians missing in Iraq since they were kidnapped by ISIS in Mosul in 2014 were killed by the terror outfiti.

"We wanted to give the families closure only after getting concrete proof," the Minister told the Parliament.

The government said it received confirmation on Monday that the DNAs of 38 of the missing Indians had matched with remains found underneath a mass grave, one of many found in and around Mosul and Badush after their liberation from ISIS.


A moment's silence was observed in the Rajya Sabha after the foreign minister's statement.

"We used a deep penetration satellite to see a mass grave... We requested that the bodies be brought out, exhumed," Swaraj told the Rajya Sabha.

"It was a difficult task to get proof...there were mass graves. It was a pile of bodies. To track down the bodies of our people and to take them to Baghdad for DNA tests was a huge task," she told Rajya Sabha, hailing her junior, Minister of State VK Singh, for supervising the job in challenging circumstances.

The opposition Congress condoled the deaths but its Rajya Sabha leader Ghulam Nabi Azad recalled government that it had "assured us last year that the Indians were alive".

The Indian labourers mostly from Punjab, Bihar, Himachal Pradesh and Bengal, were taken hostage when the ISIS overran Mosul in 2014. The workers were trying to leave Mosul when they were caught.

VK Singh visited Iraq days after Mosul's liberation from ISIS .