All the 39 Indians abducted by the ISIS terror outfit in Mosul in Iraq three years ago are dead and their bodies have been recovered, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said today.
While it was not immediately known when the Indians were killed, their bodies were recovered from Badosh - a village in northwest of Mosul, and their identities established through DNA testing, she said making a suo motu statement in the Rajya Sabha.
The mortal remains, which were exhumed from a mass grave in Badosh, will be brought back to India on a special plane and handed over to their relatives, she said.
"I had said that I will not declare anyone dead without substantive proof... today I have come to fulfil that commitment," she said.
"I had said that closure will be done with full proof. And when we will, with a heavy heart, give the mortal remains to their kin, it will be a kind of closure."
"It has been the most difficult and complex task to get the proof," she said. "Such a barbaric terror organization. There were mass graves. It was a pile of bodies. To track down the bodies of our people and take them to Baghdad to test was a huge task."
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