The Indian government confirmed that the 39 Indians in Mosul in Iraq are dead, four years after they were abducted by the Islamic State.

In an address to both Houses of the Parliament on Tuesday, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said that the bodies of all 39 individuals were exhumed from a mound in Badush village northwest of Mosul.

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DNA tests confirmed that 38 of them were the Indians reported missing since 2014. There was only a 70 per cent match in the DNA of Raju Kumar Yadav from Bihar because the sample provided was of his relatives and not his parents, who are deceased.

Punjab

1. Dharminder Kumar

2. Harish Kumar

3. Harsimranjeet Singh

4. Kanwal Jit Singh

5. Malkit Singh

6. Ranjit Singh

7. Sonu

8. Sandeep Kumar

9. Manjinder Singh

10. Gurcharan Singh

11. Balwant Rai

12. Roop Lal

13. Devinder Singh

14. Kulwinder Singh

15. Jatinder Singh

16. Nishan Singh

17. Gurdeep Singh

18. Kamaljit Singh

19. Gobinder Singh

20. Pritpal Sharma

21. Sukhwinder Singh

22. Jasvir Singh

23. Parvinder Kumar

24. Balvir Chand

25. Surjeet Mainka

26. Nand Lal

27. Rakesh Kumar

Himachal Pradesh

28. Aman Kumar

29. Sandeep Singh Rana

30. Inderjeet

31. Hem Raj

West Bengal

32. Samar Tikadar

33. Khokhan Sikder

Bihar

34. Santosh Kumar Singh

35. Bidya Bhushan Tiwari

36. Adalat Singh

37. Sunil Kumar Kushwaha

38. Dharmendra Kumar

39. Raju Kumar Yadav (to be verified)

Even though the government said that announcing the deaths in the Parliament before telling the families was protocol, criticism mounted over the manner in which the matter was handled.

The BJP continued to claim that politics was being played over the deaths of the Indians. The kin of the deceased were not satisfied with the government’s hurried announcement of the deaths on national TV.