Minister of External Affairs Sushma Swaraj said on Tuesday that the families of the 39 Indians who died in Iraq were not kept in the dark, and that it was parliamentary procedure to inform the House of their death first.

“Some kin of the victims have questioned as to why they were not told about the deaths before the Parliament,” Swaraj said at a press conference in New Delhi. “Since the Parliament is in session, it was my duty to first inform the House.”

Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted a condolence message and said every Indian stands in solidarity with the bereaved families.

“The MEA and particularly my colleagues Sushma Swaraj ji and General VK Singh ji left no stone unturned in trying to trace and safely bring back those we lost in Mosul,” Modi said. “Our government remains fully committed towards ensuring the safety of our sisters and brothers overseas.”

In June 2014, Islamic State militants had allegedly abducted 40 Indian labourers from a construction site near Mosul. Most of the victims were from low-income families in Punjab. One youth, identified as Harjit Masih, managed to return to India.

On Tuesday afternoon, Swaraj told the Rajya Sabha that the government had confirmed that all the Indians were dead. She said their bodies had been exhumed and a DNA analysis was done.

Of the deceased, 27 people were from Punjab, six were from Bihar, four from Himachal Pradesh and two from West Bengal. The identity of one person is still being verified, she said.

Dismissing complaints that the government had given the families false hope, she said, “I had told the House continuously for three years that until I get proof of their death, I will not close any file. It would have been a sin had we handed over anybody’s body claiming it to be those of our people, just for the sake of closing file.”

“We had been saying that we neither have the evidence of them being alive nor the evidence of them being dead. We maintained this in 2014 and 2017. We did not keep anyone in dark,” Swaraj said. Reiterating her statements from the House, she added, “This wasn’t falsehood, this was a tireless effort.”

She added that it was not easy to confirm when the 39 Indians were killed. “It could be six months back or two years back, in any case search for bodies would have begun only after the liberation of Mosul,” the Union minister said.

She also criticised the Congress for “playing politics” with these deaths.

‘40th man kidnapped’ was lying, says Swaraj

Harjit Masih, who said he was the 40th Indian kidnapped, had claimed in 2015 that the others were all killed while he was in Iraq. He said that a few days after the Indian contingent was taken hostage in June, they were all taken to a hilltop and shot from behind. He claimed he was hit in the leg, and pretended to be dead, which is how he later escaped. Swaraj had said at that time that she had eight sources who confirmed that the 39 Indians were still alive.

On Tuesday, Swaraj said Masih had lied. “Masih had escaped along with Bangladeshis with the help of a caterer using a fake name Ali,” the minister said. “The details were revealed to me by Masih’s employer and the caterer who helped him.”

Masih had also alleged that he had been kept in custody by Indian agencies for a year and was tortured. Refuting this, Swaraj said on Tuesday that it was a baseless allegation.