(Online Desk)

Minister of State for External Affairs V K Singh will visit Iraq on April 1 to bring home the bodies of 39 Indians who were killed in the country following their abduction by the Islamic State, according to news agency ANI.  Parliament was earlier informed that the bodies would be brought to India within a week’s time.

Minister of External Affairs Sushma Swaraj informed Parliament last week that all 39 Indians abducted by ISIS in 2015 had been killed and their bodies recovered from a mass grave in Badoosh, Iraq. Families of some of the deceased had met the minister at Delhi and had sought financial help as their bread earners were dead and also government jobs for the next of kin.

Swaraj had told Parliament last week that all the 39 Indians, abducted by the ISIS in Iraq in 2014, had been killed and their bodies recovered.

As many as 40 Indians were abducted by the ISIS terror group from Mosul in Iraq but one of them escaped posing as a Muslim from Bangladesh, Swaraj had said in Rajya Sabha.

The remaining 39 Indians were taken to Badoosh and killed, she had said.

Search operations led to a mound in Badoosh where locals said some bodies were buried by the ISIS.

Deep penetration radars were used to establish that the mound indeed was a mass grave, she had said, adding the Indian authorities requested their Iraqi counterpart to exhume the bodies.

The bodies were then sent to Baghdad for DNA testing.

DNA testing by Martyrs Foundation established the identity of 38 Indians while there has been 70 per cent matching of the DNA for the 39th person, she had said.