In the firing line of the Congress whose MPs charged her for misleading Parliament over the status of the 39 missing Indians in Iraq, a combative External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Thursday said the sources who gave the Government confidence of not abandoning the search for them include a “head of State and a Foreign Minister of another country”. She refused to disclose the identity of the sources on grounds of “diplomatic confidentiality”.
In the Rajya Sabha, Sushma also said some Congress members were leveling this allegation as part of their personal and political agenda. Repeating her statement which she gave in the lok Sabha on Tuesday, the Minister said she will not declare missing Indians dead till she does not get “concrete” or “solid” evidence.
Making a statement in response to Zero Hour mention on the issue raised by Pratap Singh Bajwa (Congress) on July 19, she denied the member’s allegation that she had claimed in the house that the Indians were alive and said she never made such a claim either inside or outside Parliament.
The Minister said she has all through maintained that there is no proof of the abducted Indians being alive or dead. And in absence of “solid proof,” it is a “sin” at personal level and irresponsible act on the part of the Government to declare them dead, she said. In a rare combative posture, she then shot back “why should I apologiseIJ That I did not declare them deadIJ”
Sushma said a day after the Iraqi Prime Minister declared that Mosul district was free of ISIS, MoS for External Affairs General (retired) VK Singh rushed to Mosul on July 10. Singh met senior Iraqi officials who showed him a report written in Arabic and translated into English that the Indians were abducted from Mosul airfield and then forced to help in construction of a hospital there. The Indians were then made to work as farmers and were last seen in a jail in Badush in early 2016. There was no further information about them since then, the Iraqi officials told Singh, Sushma told the House. This report was shared with the relatives of the abducted persons, she said and denied Bajwa’s claim that the Minister was constantly changing goal posts.
Bajwa countered Swaraj’s assertion, asking what would Harjit Masih, one of the abducted Indians who had escaped, gain by claiming that he had witnessed the 39 being shot dead. Responding to this, Swaraj said she was first to speak to Masih after he called upon her but did not provide convincing reply of how he was able to escape. Also, family of one of 39 people had received a call from the captors, she said.