India was praised internationally last week for successfully evacuating more than 4,000 Indians and 1,000 people of other nationalities from war-torn Yemen in a massive operation that showed “bravery and magnanimity”. But in another conflict-wracked part of the Middle East, the Indian government has dropped the ball. It still has no clue about the fate of the 40 Indian labourers abducted by Islamist rebels in Iraq in June 2014.
The 40 Indians – all from low-income families in Punjab – were kidnapped by militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIS, from a construction site near Mosul city where they were working.
The last that was heard about them was in November 2014, when two Bangladeshi labourers kidnapped along with them were released. The Bangladeshis claimed that 39 of the 40 Indians had been shot dead by the ISIS militants, while one managed to escape. Almost immediately, however, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj announced that there was no proof of the deaths, and that the government’s search for the abducted Indians would go on.
Nine months since the kidnappings, the 40 men seem to have disappeared from news headlines as well as the priority list of the Ministry of External Affairs.
Alive or killed?
The last time the ministry put out an official statement about the case was six weeks ago, on February 22, 2015. Summing up Swaraj’s sixth meeting with family members of the missing men, her statement on the ministry’s website said:
Distraught family members of the abducted men say they have heard nothing from the government in the past six weeks, but have no option but to keep up the hope.
“We keep making calls to the government in Delhi and they keep telling us they are trying,” said Anita Rani, wife of Gurdeep Singh whose kidnapping happened a year to the day he left for Iraq to work in mechanics and construction. Rani lives in Jaitpur, a village in Punjab’s Hoshiarpur district, and finds it difficult to get labour work while looking after her four-year-old daughter and one-year-old son. “Gurdeep was the only earning member of our family so we are now struggling financially. And our children don’t even remember their father much.”
Keeping the faith
While Rani says she has no option but to have faith in the external affairs ministry, the family of Manjinder Singh from Bhoiwal, Amritsar, is beginning to lose hope.
“The ministry does not even answer our phone calls anymore – we don’t know what to do and where to look for my brother,” said Gurpinder Kaur, a teacher and Manjinder Singh’s sister. Many families, she says, were hoping journalists would be able to get more information about the missing men from the central government.
Like most of the other Punjabi construction workers caught in the ISIS nightmare, Manjinder Singh had left for Mosul in late 2013 after an agent promised him a good job to improve the prospects of his farmer family. “But he was not happy there because the construction company he worked for seized his passport on arrival and did not treat him well,” said Kaur. “If they hadn’t taken his passport, he would have been back home before this kidnapping happened.”
The family first came to know about the kidnapping on June 11, 2014, when Manjinder Singh called to say they were being abducted. They heard no more for the next few days, but finally reached his phone again on June 15. “He said they were alright, but were being moved from one place to another,” said Kaur. “He said the Bangladeshis were being freed but the Indians were being held. Almost all the 40 families managed to speak to their men around that time, but then the phones went off.”
All the families Scroll.in contacted had the same story about the last call from Mosul, and similar levels of desperation.
“My son went to Iraq only because there were no jobs here, but for the last two months before the kidnapping, he had not even been given his wages,” said Shimbu Kaur, mother of Kulwinder Singh, a construction worker originally from Jalandhar district. “Now we have no idea where he is, and the grandchildren keep asking me, when will we see papa?”
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The 40 Indians – all from low-income families in Punjab – were kidnapped by militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIS, from a construction site near Mosul city where they were working.
The last that was heard about them was in November 2014, when two Bangladeshi labourers kidnapped along with them were released. The Bangladeshis claimed that 39 of the 40 Indians had been shot dead by the ISIS militants, while one managed to escape. Almost immediately, however, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj announced that there was no proof of the deaths, and that the government’s search for the abducted Indians would go on.
Nine months since the kidnappings, the 40 men seem to have disappeared from news headlines as well as the priority list of the Ministry of External Affairs.
Alive or killed?
The last time the ministry put out an official statement about the case was six weeks ago, on February 22, 2015. Summing up Swaraj’s sixth meeting with family members of the missing men, her statement on the ministry’s website said:
“…till date we have no evidence if they are alive or dead. But due to the efforts we are putting in, we have been informed by many sources that they are still alive. And we believe the information is true, so we are still searching for them…We have deployed our full resources to resolve this issue.”
Distraught family members of the abducted men say they have heard nothing from the government in the past six weeks, but have no option but to keep up the hope.
“We keep making calls to the government in Delhi and they keep telling us they are trying,” said Anita Rani, wife of Gurdeep Singh whose kidnapping happened a year to the day he left for Iraq to work in mechanics and construction. Rani lives in Jaitpur, a village in Punjab’s Hoshiarpur district, and finds it difficult to get labour work while looking after her four-year-old daughter and one-year-old son. “Gurdeep was the only earning member of our family so we are now struggling financially. And our children don’t even remember their father much.”
Keeping the faith
While Rani says she has no option but to have faith in the external affairs ministry, the family of Manjinder Singh from Bhoiwal, Amritsar, is beginning to lose hope.
“The ministry does not even answer our phone calls anymore – we don’t know what to do and where to look for my brother,” said Gurpinder Kaur, a teacher and Manjinder Singh’s sister. Many families, she says, were hoping journalists would be able to get more information about the missing men from the central government.
Like most of the other Punjabi construction workers caught in the ISIS nightmare, Manjinder Singh had left for Mosul in late 2013 after an agent promised him a good job to improve the prospects of his farmer family. “But he was not happy there because the construction company he worked for seized his passport on arrival and did not treat him well,” said Kaur. “If they hadn’t taken his passport, he would have been back home before this kidnapping happened.”
The family first came to know about the kidnapping on June 11, 2014, when Manjinder Singh called to say they were being abducted. They heard no more for the next few days, but finally reached his phone again on June 15. “He said they were alright, but were being moved from one place to another,” said Kaur. “He said the Bangladeshis were being freed but the Indians were being held. Almost all the 40 families managed to speak to their men around that time, but then the phones went off.”
All the families Scroll.in contacted had the same story about the last call from Mosul, and similar levels of desperation.
“My son went to Iraq only because there were no jobs here, but for the last two months before the kidnapping, he had not even been given his wages,” said Shimbu Kaur, mother of Kulwinder Singh, a construction worker originally from Jalandhar district. “Now we have no idea where he is, and the grandchildren keep asking me, when will we see papa?”
