Chandigarh: India on Monday welcomed the liberation of Mosul in Iraq from Islamic State and called it an important milestone in the global war on terror. However, the fate of 39 Indians reportedly missing in Mosul is not yet clear.
The Ministry of External Affairs said that the government has activated various channels for locating them, adding that Union Minister of State for External Affairs V K Singh is headed to Erbil in Iraq later on Monday.
Iraqi authorities have assured India of all cooperation in the matter.
The government last month had claimed that they had credible information about the exact location of the missing construction workers based on information provided by a source. They said the information had been conveyed to Iraqi authorities and Iraqi forces were also asked to be careful not to attack the area where the Indians were suspected to be located.
However, despite this, families of the missing Indians are still not sure if they will be reunited with their loved ones. While the government is hopeful and External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj has assured Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh that the government is making all-out efforts to trace and facilitate return of the 39 Indians, there is no confirmation of their whereabouts.
Family members have so far met Swaraj at least eleven times. On June 8, she made one change. Instead of the families of persons from Punjab, Himachal, Haryana and Bihar missing in Iraq seeking the meeting, Swaraj herself reached out to them and asked to meet in New Delhi.
Speaking in chaste Punjabi, she told the families that the battle to retake Mosul was 90 percent over and once the remaining 10 percent was done she was hopeful that the families will be reunited with the missing workers. “My secretary level officer has met up with Iraqi officials and they have had a good conversation. I am hopeful that the outcome will be positive. Your prayers and our efforts will help get your loved ones back,” she told the families gathered around her.
“We are very hopeful, we are so hopeful that we can't contain our anxiety. It seems so near now. But we still do not have positive information on the whereabouts of our families. I cannot wait to see my brother again, but I don’t know where he is and what is happening right now,” said Gurpinder Kaur, a teacher at a school in Punjab’s Hoshiarpur district whose brother Manjinder Singh is among the missing Indians.
Gyano, wife of Balwant Rai another construction worker from Punjab missing in Iraq can't stop her tears in her village Dhadde in Punjab’s Jalandhar district. She said she is praying that her husband comes back safe and sound.
Usha Rani, a resident of Jalandhar, said, “Our hopes have been dashed several times but we hope this time round the government will help us and we will get our relatives back.” Her husband Surjit Mainka went missing just four months after he had reached Iraq for work.
Member of Parliament from Punjab, Harsimrat Badal who had accompanied the families to meet with Sushma Swaraj, said, “The minister has been seeking any and every information that she could get on the missing people in Iraq. There is an informer there who has been giving them constant information on the situation. He has given in writing the exact location of the workers saying he has seen around 25 Indians in Mosul.”
Balwant Singh Ramoowalia, a Punjab politician who has been taking up cases of missing Indians in foreign countries, said, “At least 99 percent, if not 100 per cent surety is there that these missing people are alive and safe. A reliable source has confirmed the name of a church in Mosul city where he says he has seen 25 Punjabi looking men. Maybe all 39 were there but they might have altered their appearance in a Muslim area and grown beards which made them unrecognisable. Map locations were given to Iraqi forces to make sure those areas were not targeted in the battle for Mosul.”
Hopes of family members are running high even as time for the Indian government is running out to make sure their information is correct and promises to get the missing construction workers back home safe and sound are kept.
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