Islamic State survivor Harjit Masih reiterates that 39 Indians gone missing in Iraq are dead

Gurdaspur: Thirty-year-old survivor Harjit Masih, who managed to return from Iraq, again repeated his claims that all his fellow Indians were killed by the Islamic State militants. [caption id=“attachment_4166283” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] File image of Harjit Masih. Image courtesy: YouTube[/caption] “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 in Gurdaspur, Punjab. He maintained that the 39 abducted Indians had been killed by the Islamic State. “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 in Gurdaspur, managed to return to India after giving a slip to his abductors in 2014 after being shot in his feet. 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. The samples of DNAs of the families of missing Indians were being collected by the district authorities in Punjab. Health authorities in Gurdaspur have collected DNA samples from the family members of three of the 39 Indians missing in Iraq to ascertain their identities.