ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - No ransom demand was made, no video has surfaced, no grave has been found. That is why almost two years on, family members of 39 Indian workers kidnapped in Mosul by the Islamic group ISIS, are still searching for their loved ones – even though one of their companions says they were all killed.
When ISIS took over Mosul in June, 2014, around one hundred foreign workers were trapped at the construction site of University Lake Towers in Mosul. The 40 Indians and 52 Bangladeshis had been contracted for the work by the Tariq Noor al-Huda firm in Baghdad, and were building 1,000 flats, a mosque, schools, roads and a sports stadium in the Jamia district of the city.
The Iraqi workers had left the site when ISIS started attacking the city a few days earlier, telling the foreign workers to lay low. They expected the danger would only last a couple of days. “You are from another country, they will not touch you,” they told them.
The workers were worried and phoned home. They repeatedly asked their embassies in Baghdad to come and help them, but were told the authorities were not able to do so because of the ongoing violence.
A day after ISIS captured the city on June 10, the radicals discovered the workers, and both the Indians and Bangladeshis were taken from the site, first to a shopping mall and then to a warehouse. They were given food and water, and were able to phone their families and embassies.
Even though the militants had promised to send them to safety of the Iraqi Kurdish capital Erbil, it was obivious to all that they had been kidnapped, said Harjit Masih, 24, the only survivor of the Indian group later to the Indian Fountain Ink website.
On June 15, the radicals separated the Indians--all Hindus--from the Muslim Bangladeshis and ordered the first group into a container loaded on a truck. That took them to the outskirts of Mosul, probably the desert area of Badoosh. There they were ordered to stand in line. “We will convert to Islam”, some sobbed. But they were shot.
Masih had fallen even before he was hit and survived when one of the dead men fell on top of him. He was able to eventually leave the location of the massacre and get back to the construction site, posing as a Bangladeshi. Eventually he was transported out to Erbil with the other Bangladeshi workers, and was able to return to India.
At the time of the ISIS march into Iraq, about 10,000 Indian nationals were working in the country, with some 100 caught in areas hit by violence.
The others were 46 Indian nurses stranded in the city of Tikrit, who were transported to Mosul by ISIS, and eventually, on July 5, 2014 evacuated out by the Indian government. Although Delhi never confirmed it, this must have been the result of direct negotiations with ISIS. It is also not known whether the Indian government has paid a ransom for the nurses.
It’s partly their fate, and the fact that while they are also Hindus (whom ISIS considered as unbelievers) the group let them go, that has triggered the families of the Indian men to keep hope the execution story is not correct and their loved ones are still alive – somewhere inside ISIS territory.
At the same time, the Indian government has mentioned that it has multiple sources claiming, even in writing, that they are indeed still alive. Suggestions have been floated that the Indians have been forced by ISIS to dig the tunnels that have been found in both the cities of Sinjar and Ramadi after they were liberated.
There is no material evidence to prove otherwise. Tribal sources in the Badoosh area of Mosul have not noticed any sounds pointing to an execution late afternoon on June 15, 2014.
Although Harjit Masih has said that he saw one of the ISIS radicals filming the massacre, no video images have surfaced; which is strange because ISIS normally is eager to show off its brutalities, as for instance it did with the execution of hundreds of Shiite soldiers at around the same time.
On the other hand: unlike with other foreign captives, no ransom demands have been made, and the Indians have not appeared on any of the lists that are circulating of ISIS prisoners.
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