I had been saying all along that all 39 were dead, says lone survivor Harjit Masih

Chandigarh, March 20

Harjit Masih, the lone survivor who had managed to flee from ISIS captivity in Iraq in June 2014 following his kidnapping along with 39 other Indians there, on Tuesday said he had been maintaining for the past three years that all others had been killed.

“I had been saying for the past three years that all 39 Indians had been killed (by ISIS militants),” Masih said.

“I had spoken the truth,” asserted Masih, resident of Kala Afghana village in Gurdaspur district.

Masih was one of the 40 Indian workers kidnapped by the ISIS militant outfit.

His statement came after External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Tuesday informed Parliament that all 39 Indian workers, kidnapped by ISIS in Iraq nearly three years ago, were killed and their bodies had been recovered.

Masih said they were killed in front of his eyes and he had been saying all these years, wondering why the government was not accepting what he had said earlier.

Giving details of the incident, Masih said the Indians were working at a factory in Iraq in 2014.

“But we were kidnapped by militants and kept hostage for some days,” he said.

On the fateful day, they were made to sit on their knees and the militants opened fire upon them.

“I was fortunate to have survived though a bullet hit my thigh and I fell unconscious,” he said.

He, however, managed to return to India after giving the slip to the ISIS militants after suffering a gun wound.

As many as 39 Indians, who had gone to Iraq to earn their livelihood, had been missing since 2014.

Among them, several were from Amritsar, Gurdaspur, Hoshiarpur, Kapurthala and Jalandhar. PTI