When Batala-resident Dharmender Kumar left for Iraq some years back, there was no way her mother could have guessed that she would hear death knell instead of wedding bells. Waiting insistently with hopeful eyes, she had even shortlisted “brides” for him. But her hopes parted ways after the Union External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj’s announcement on Tuesday that her son was among 39 Indians who was killed by the ISIS in Iraq.
For Gurpinder Kaur, sister of Amritsar-resident Manjinder Singh, the news came as a shock. Refusing to believe the news “on television”, Gurpinder said that she would not believe till the Minister confirms the news personally to her.
“Minister had all along been saying that my brother is alive and they are making every possible effort to trace his location...Now, I don’t know what to believe...I am feeling betrayed,” added grieving Gurpinder.
Similar was the state of other families which were inconsolable after receiving the shocking news.
In all 40 Indians were taken hostage by the ISIS, but one among them, Harjeet Masih, managed to escape in 2015. Masih had then claimed that other 39 Indians were killed by the terrorists - an assertion categorically rejected by the Ministry for all these years.
Unhappy with the way the news was broke, the mournful families maintained that they were feeling betrayed while accusing the Centre of giving them “false assurance” for all these years.
“I will believe that my brother is actually dead only when the Ministry contacts me,” said Gurpinder, who has been making efforts to get together the families of the missing men in the region under one umbrella for all these years.
She insisted that the families should have been contacted as soon as they received the information. “Had that been done, it would not have
been such a huge blow. We feel betrayed from all sides,”
she said.
Kapurthala’s Gobinder Singh’s family is now waiting for his body to “see him one last time”. “They kept us in dark...the government should now hand over the bodies to families at the earliest,” said Amarjeet, wife of Gobinder, who was the sole breadwinner of the family.
His brother, Davinder Singh, too blamed the Centre for lying to them all these years. “Masih had claimed that 39 men were gunned down in 2014, but the Government did not believe him and kept lying to us,” he said.
Just like Amarjeet, Usha too wanted to see her husband Surjit Singh alias Sonu for the last time. She said that the family sent Sonu to Iraq in 2013 after borrowing money and spending a total of Rs 2.50 lakh and even mortgaged the house.
With no male member in the house now, Usha said she has nowhere to go with her kids. “My father, father-in-law and now my husband is dead,” said grief-stricken Usha, apprehending that the Punjab Government may stop Rs 20,000 stipend she was getting every month to make her ends meet.