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Hostage crisis in Iraq

All Punjabis dead, claims survivor

CHANDIGARH: Harjit Masih, Batala youth who was one of the 40 Indians (mostly Punjabis) reportedly kidnapped by ISIS militants in Iraq in June last year, today claimed that he was a witness to the killing of all of them.

All Punjabis dead, claims survivor

Harjit Masih (right) at a press conference with AAP MP Bhagwant Mann in Mohali on Thursday. Tribune photo: Vicky gharu



Jupinderjit Singh

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, May 14

Harjit Masih, Batala youth who was one of the 40 Indians (mostly Punjabis) reportedly kidnapped by ISIS militants in Iraq in June last year, today claimed that he was a witness to the killing of all of them.

He claimed the youths were shot dead by a firing squad at an undisclosed location within four-five days of their kidnapping.

While the Union Government rubbished the claims, the question of the safety of the abducted youths has cropped up again.

Bhagwant Mann, Aam Aadmi Party MP from Sangrur, produced Masih before the media in Mohali today. Masih said the Indian Government should specify the exact location of the youths, if it claimed they were alive. “I will be very happy if my brothers return alive, but it is not going to happen. I will get no benefit by claiming that they are all dead,” he said. Mann too challenged the Modi government to come clean on the issue. “There should be no politics on the matter. If the Union Government knows about the youths’ whereabouts, it should come out with the details,” he said.

Masih said: “It will be a miracle if any of those shot survived like me. Among the youths, six were from Bihar, two from West Bengal and the remaining from Punjab.”

Masih claimed he along with other youths was kidnapped by ISIS militants near Irbil in Iraq on June 11. “We were blindfolded. They kept changing our location. After four or five days, they bundled us in a truck and took us to some hilly area. They made us face in one direction and then shot us from behind.”

Masih said he too fell on the ground after a bullet hit him in the leg. “I was hit, but the bullet brushed past my leg. I posed as if I was dead. It was a horrifying sight. I can still hear the shrieks of my friends who were shot. I did not see any of them alive.”

Masih claims that after lying among the bodies for more than an hour, he got up and slowly went towards a road where a car carrying some youths from Bangladesh rescued him. “They told me to tell everyone that I am a Muslim from Bangladesh. I stayed with them for a few days and later approached the company I worked with.”

Later, he was handed over to Indian Embassy officials who brought him to India in July. “I was not allowed to meet anyone. They made me talk to my family over a mobile phone, which they took back immediately. I was kept in Greater Noida, Gurgaon and other places in and around New Delhi.”

He said he was recently sent to Dharamsala in Himachal Pradesh where he was told that he would be given a job. “I managed to escape and reached my village, but I did not announce my arrival as I was scared. The officials who kept me in hiding were repeatedly calling at the mobile phone of one of my friends, who knew the entire episode, asking him to bring me back to Delhi. I then approached Bhagwant Mann as he was raising the issue of the kidnapped youths.” Mann asked why Masih was kept in detention in India. He said External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj had told the Lok Sabha that Masih was with the Indian officials, but she never said he was in India.

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