The remains of 31 of the 38 Indian construction workers captured and killed by the Islamic State group in northern Iraq were handed over to Indian authorities in Baghdad was scheduled to be flown to India on Sunday. Indian Ambassador Pradeep Singh Rajpurohit said the bodies were taken to Baghdad International Airport and would be flown to India on a military flight. Minister of State for External Affairs V K Singh had left for Iraq yesterday to bring back the mortal remains of the 39 Indians, killed in the war-torn country. He saluted the remains at the airport as workers loaded the caskets on the aircraft.

Singh condemned terrorism and expressed his government’s stance in fighting it. “We are against terrorism in all its forms and manifestations,” he told reporters, describing IS as “very cruel terrorist organization and our people have fallen to their bullets”.

The death of these workers was confirmed last month by the Minster of External Affairs, Sushma Swaraj. On March 20, Swaraj had told Parliament that as many as 40 Indians were abducted by terror group ISIS from Mosul in Iraq in June 2014, but one of them escaped posing as a Muslim from Bangladesh. The remaining 39 Indians were taken to Badoosh and killed, she had said.

Special arrangements

The aircraft with the bodies of the 31 slain Indians, who hailed from different places in Punjab and Himachal Pradesh, is expected to reach Amritsar by 1:30 PM, officials said. Out of these, 27 belonged to Punjab while four hailed from Himachal Pradesh. While the remains of the men belonging to Punjab and HP would be be received at the Sri Guru Ram Das Jee International airport in Amritsar, the rest of the bodies would be flown to their respective places in Patna and Kolkata to be handed over to their relatives.

Punjab Cabinet minister Navjot Singh Sidhu will receive the bodies on behalf of the state government at the airport, the officials said. The administration has made arrangements of ambulances for transporting the coffins to their native places in Punjab, official said.

In the wake of a bandh called by a number of Dalit organizations today to protest the alleged dilution of the SC/ST Act, Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh has urged the protesters not to take the law in their own hands and, in particular, not to impede rood and rail transport in any way. The Punjab Chief Minister has appealed to the protesters to let the mortal remains of the Iraq victims be ferried to their native villages without any hindrance. He has also directed the Punjab police to provide strict security for the same along the routes, from the airport to the respective native villages of the victims.

Abducted and killed

IS abducted and killed the workers shortly after seizing the northern city of Mosul in the summer of 2014. Iraqi authorities discovered the remains in a mass grave last year after retaking Mosul, and positively identified the bodies last month. The militants initially abducted 40 workers. One managed to escape, while the presumed remains of another have yet to be positively identified. Authorities are awaiting DNA samples from a first-degree relative.

Around 10,000 Indians lived and worked in Iraq at the time at the time of IS occupied Iraq. The terrorist organisation may have viewed the workers as polytheists deserving of death because of their Hindu or Sikh faith.

IS swept across northern and central Iraq in 2014, eventually seizing a third of the country. Iraqi forces backed by a US-led coalition eventually drove the militants from all the territory under their control in a grueling three-year campaign. The militants are still carrying out insurgent-style attacks.

Dozens of mass graves have been found in areas held by the extremist group, which boasted about massacring its enemies and posted videos and photos of many of the mass killings online. Iraq has only managed to excavate a few of the sites due to a lack of funding and specialized staff.

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