Harjit Masih was lying, says Sushma Swaraj on his story of escape from Islamic State in Iraq

Harjit Masih, the lone Indian worker who escaped from Islamic State captivity in Iraq in June 2014, claimed he was shot in the leg but managed to flee.

However, external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj dismissed his claims in her statement in Rajya Sabha on Tuesday. “He was not willing to tell me how he escaped,” she said.

The minister said she had concrete evidence that he was lying.

“Masih had escaped along with Bangladeshis with the help of a caterer using a fake name Ali. The details were revealed to me by Masih’s employer and the caterer who helped him,” the minister said.

But Masih stood his ground. He told news agency ANI: “I told the truth that 39 Indians were killed. The government has misled the 39 families who lost their relatives.”

The only bread earner in a family of four, Masih, who is a resident of village Kala Afghana in Gurdaspur district of Punjab, was one of the 40 Indian workers abducted by the terror outfit.

Narrating his tale in 2017, Masih had said, “Everything was fine till May of 2014. We enjoyed our work at a factory, though some incidents of firing by IS militants happened in the outer parts of Mosul. But, a month later, they entered the factory and kidnapped all of us.”

Speaking to HT in 2017, Masih said, “we were shifted to a place I could not identify. On that fateful day, they forced us to sit on our knees, in a row, and opened fire. I received a shot in my right leg and was covered with bodies. I fell unconscious. Next day, when I regained consciousness, I found all my fellow workers dead.”

“After a few days of walking, I managed to reach a Bangladeshi relief camp and was rushed to hospital. A week later, I returned to India.”

Masih statement on being a witness to his Indian co-workers being massacred was then dismissed by the central government, which said they are treating them as ‘missing’.