IS killings spark fresh fear for 39 Indian hostages in Iraq

The Research and Analysis Wing, government sources said, has been spearheading efforts to work with regional intelligence services to locate the missing construction workers. Last year, the government sources said, the RA&W sought the services of Harjit Masih, a Mosul construction worker who fled to Erbil soon after the hostage crisis began. Masih claimed to have seen his co-workers shot dead in cold blood, saying he survived the slaughter by lying among the deads.

Family members told The Indian Express that Masih was now working with the RA&W, who had asked for his services to help identify the missing men should they be found. They, however, declined to provide his contact details. The Ministry of External Affairs also said it is not in touch with Masih.

In November, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj had been dismissive of Masih’s account, telling both houses of Parliament that the government had information from six separate sources that the Indian workers were alive. The statement, the sources said, had been based on lists of names from individuals with business and personal interests in the area.

The names included some in common with the 39 missing Indians, but there were others also. At least three missing Indians appear to be from southern part of the nation. The Indian Express is withholding the names in the interests of not causing distress to the families concerned.

However, the MEA sources said, the informants had been unable to provide any proof of life on the hostages, for example photographs or belongings. There has been, they said, no further information since November.

The has only been limited assistance from Turkish and Iraqi intelligence services, a senior intelligence official said. “I guess it is understandable”, he said, “they have a war to worry about, and important as our citizens are to us, they’re not top priorities for anyone else”.

Indian diplomats and the RA&W have also had little success, the sources added, in tapping non-governmental organisations working in Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan for information. The organisations include some with Indian links.

Khalsa Aid, a United Kingdom-based Sikh charity led by Ravi Singh Sidhu, has been active with Yazidi refugees fleeing Islamic State violence into Turkey. The Art of Living Foundation has, similarly, been carrying out charitable work in Erbil.

“Yet, we just can’t give up on our citizens unless there is some evidence that they are dead,” a senior MEA official. “Whatever our private fears might be, and however, pessimistic our friends in the region are, the effort has to continue”.

In private, both Syrian and Iraqi diplomats have said the chances of the men being alive are receding, noting that hundreds of enslaved workers earlier held by the Islamic State have fled to safe havens in Turkey and Kurdistan.

Last year, The Indian Express had quoted a top Kurdish government saying that they had information that several “workers, along with many other people were killed by DAISH [Dawla Islami, or Islamic State] and their corpses were thrown into a giant deep hole in the Sahaji area”. The Kurdish official, however, emphasised that he could not corroborate whether any Indians were among those killed at Sahaji, a village south-west of Mosul on the highway to Tel Afar, on the border with Syria.

The Islamic State negotiators have ransomed hostages in the past-among them — a group of Turkish diplomats held in Mosul along with the construction workers were swapped for arrested terrorists.