VK Singh bent on finding missing Indians

Minister of State for External Affairs VK Singh on Sunday met Iraqi Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Eshaiker al-Jaafari in Baghdad, and held meetings with Iraqi National Security Advisor and Chief of Staff of the Army to coordinate search operations for the 39 missing Indians and find concrete information related to their whereabouts.

The news agencies earlier quoted him saying that the search in Mosul and Badush to trace missing Indians has not revealed any positive results. He also said that Operation Hunt was over in Iraq. General Singh said "we will now have to rely on DNA samples" to ascertain the fate of the 39 Indians who were earlier believed to be held in ISIS captivity in Mosul and neighbouring areas. The minister said the search teams have explored all possible avenues and inputs in Mosul, Badoush and Talafar, but no positive results of any leads could be found. He said that the DNA samples collected from some of the family members of missing persons had been sent to match with the database in Iraq, and also with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

There are some mentally unstable ISIS captives in Iraqi prisons, but they are unable to identify themselves. "We will not lose hope as we have no conclusive proof they are dead or alive," said VK Singh.

The 39 Indians were kidnapped by terrorist group ISIS in June 2014. Among them, 22 were from Amritsar, Gurdaspur, Hoshiarpur, Kapurthala and Jalandhar in Punjab. One person, Harjit Masih, who escaped from ISIS captivity, claimed that the rest were shot dead.