As world mourns Kenji Goto, MEA worries it's too late for 39 Indian IS captives

As the world recoils in horror over the Islamic State beheading of Japanese journalist Kenji Goto, Indian intelligence officials are reportedly worried about the fate of the 39 Indian construction workers who were taken hostage by the group last year. Efforts on the part of intelligence agencies for information have also drawn a blank, with absolutely no news from the region coming out since November, a report in the Indian Express said. [caption id=“attachment_2074819” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  PTI[/caption] There has been little to suggest that the Indian workers are alive. One Indian worker, identified as Harjeet Masih had said that all his colleagues had been executed by IS militants, and that he had survived by lying among the bodies and pretending to be dead. This information was corroborated a few months later, by a group of Bangladeshi workers who had escaped the group. A media report cited statements of Shafi and Hassan, Bangladeshis who claimed to have been released by their ISIS captors after segregating them from Indians, to claim that 39 Indians had been killed. They based their claim on what they had been told by Harjeet, the Times of India reported. However, as noted in this Times of India report, External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj made statements in both the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha saying that there was reason to believe that the men were still alive, refuting the statement by the Bangladeshi workers. “On the one hand there is one source about which there is no confirmation. Six different sources have informed the government that they have not been killed,” she said, adding that “We do not accept his statement. Our prayers and hopes are alive. Our search for their safe release is on….It is my duty and responsibility to keep the hope of tracing them alive and bring them home safely”. “Shafi and Hassan have made the claim but they are not eye-witnesses and their statements are only secondary in nature. They have not said they were killed before them, they are only quoting Harjeet, who is one source whose confirmation no one has made,” she said. The External Affairs Minister then  dispatched two MEA officials to Erbil to intensify efforts to bring back the 40 men, but in the absence of confirmed locations and access to the men who are holding them, the efforts had been unsuccessful. MEA officials and diplomats privately admit that there is little chance that the Indian men are alive, but have said that they will keep probing until they have confirmation either way. “We just can’t give up on our citizens unless there is some evidence that they are dead,” a senior MEA official was quoted as saying in the Express report. “Whatever our private fears might be, and however, pessimistic our friends in the region are, the effort has to continue”.