Minister of State for External Affairs Gen (Retd) V K Singh is likely to travel to Iraq in a special aircraft on 1 April to bring back the mortal remains of the 39 Indians who were abducted and killed by terrorists of the Islamic State in Mosul, it is learnt.
He is expected to return the next day. His plane would first land at Amritsar to hand over the mortal remains of the deceased from Punjab and Himachal Pradesh to their relatives.
The minister would then travel to Patna and Kolkata to hand over the mortal remains of the victims from Bihar and West Bengal respectively.
While Iraq’s Martyr’s Foundation has been able to determine the DNA match for 38 Indians, the 39th Indian Raju Yadav’s DNA matching is still said to be under process.
The bodies are currently being stored in a freezer at the Medico-Legal Institute of Iraq in Baghdad.
On 20 March, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj informed Parliament that bodies of the 39 Indians who went missing in Mosul in June 2014 were found in a mass grave in Badoosh.
Some of the family members of the victims from Punjab came to New Delhi earlier this week to meet the minister and placed two demands ~ one, that the bodies be brought back at the earliest and second that the family members be compensated.