Harjeet Masih reiterates that missing Indians are dead

GURDASPUR, Oct 22: Thirty-year-old survivor Harjit Masih, who managed to return from Iraq, today again repeated his claims that all his fellow Indians were killed by the ISIS militants there.

“Why the Government is not accepting the reality and giving proper information about the 39 Indians to their kins? If the Government says all Indians are safe, why has it not produced any of them in all these three years! Moreover, what will I get by not telling truth,” Masih said talking to reporters here.

He maintained that the 39 abducted Indians had been killed by the ISIS.

“I still pray to God that my claim proves wrong,” he further said.

Masih, who was abducted along with 39 other Indians in Iraq in 2014, had claimed that they were shot by militants few days after they were abducted.

However, Masih resident of Kala Afghana village here, managed to return to India after giving a slip to his abductors in 2014 after being shot in his feet.

The samples of the families of missing Indians were being collected the district authorities in Punjab.

Health authorities here yesterday collected DNA samples of the family members of three of the 39 Indians missing in Iraq to ascertain their identities.

A total of 39 Indians had been missing in Iraq since 2014. Among them, 22 were from Amritsar, Gurdaspur, Hoshiarpur, Kapurthala and Jalandhar in Punjab. (PTI)