On Tuesday, Sushma Swaraj confirmed that 39 Indian citizens (of the 40 who were abducted in 2014 by the ISIS in Iraq) were killed. Until October last year, both India and Iraq had contended that the the 39 people were alive.
Only one man, Harjit Masih, managed to escape the horrifying ordeal and returned to India. He said that while he survived, his 39 fellow captives had been killed. But, the Indian government rejected his story and insisted that the 39 were still alive. They called Masih a liar and detained him for nearly a year. Sushma Swaraj, however, claimed that he was not in detention, but was kept under protective custody for the sake of his own safety. On March 30, 2016, reports emerged of Harjit Masih’s arrest by the Punjab police for a case lodged against him under the Immigration Act and Forgery. He has been accused of involvement in an alleged immigration racket.
The 39 Indians who were murdered by ISIS were from Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal. From 2015 to 2017, three of these states were heading for the Assembly Elections. There is little doubt that the Modi government tried to cover up the incident and mislead the public. Did he do it because he was petrified that this issue could have a negative impact on the BJP in the state elections? I can’t think of any other reason for this big fraud.
In June 2014, just after the abduction of these 39 workers and the 46 nurses at Tikrit, it was reported that the National Security Adviser Ajit Doval and the Intelligence Bureau Director Asif Ibrahim had flown to Baghdad and Riyadh, respectively. While the mission to rescue the nurses succeeded, the MoEF did not admit that the mission to rescue the 39 workers had failed. In June 2016, Kurdish officials informed The Indian Express that the 39 Indians had been killed. The Kurdish intelligence officials believed that the Indian workers were initially held by the local Mosul militia with links to ousted dictator Saddam Husain’s Ba’ath party, but were then handed over to the Islamic State for execution. For nearly four years, Sushma Swaraj lied through her teeth about the so-called reliable sources through which she claimed the 39 Indians were still alive.
Modi’s pro-Israel-US foreign policy has put all Indians working in sensitive areas like Iraq, Afganistan, etc. at risk. This explains why Indians appear to be in danger of abduction only when the BJP is in power. The other issue here is the complete apathy of the government towards the families of the 39 Indians. None of the families claimed that they had been compensated. Why has Modi forsaken these families?
Indians are travelling abroad because there is massive unemployment in the country. Having failed to create crores of jobs, the least Modi sarkar should have ensured is that the citizens who are working in countries like Iraq are given all the necessary support in case of an emergency. Now that this jumla is out, Sushma Swaraj should resign as the Minister for External Affairs, and Narendra Modi should apologise to the country for trying to cover up the massacre.