Six months after the remains of the 39 Indians reportedly killed by Islamic State militants were brought from Iraq, the tragedy has taken a new turn with a family member accusing survivor Harjeet Masih of being responsible for the death of the men.
Gurpinder Kaur, sister of one of the victims, has approached a Punjab court accusing Mr. Masih and his relative Rajveer Singh of conspiracy to kill the Indian workers in Mosul over financial disputes.
“My brother Manjinder told us that they had a months-long quarrel with Harjeet and his Abu Dhabi-based relative Rajveer who were the ones who took them to Iraq. All of them wanted to return as soon as the war in Iraq escalated. But Harjeet had demanded ₹2 lakh from each for the return,” said Gurpinder Kaur. She said Mr. Masih and his relative were probably backed by powerful people and a human traffickers’ network.
Mr. Masih first hit the headlines in 2015 when he returned to India from Iraq via Turkey and claimed that he saw IS militants slaughter the hostages in a bloodbath. The Ministry of External Affairs did not believe his account, though subsequently it was established that the men were indeed killed in 2014 and buried in a mass grave near the city of Mosul where they worked as construction labourers.
Ms. Gurpinder spoke to her brother Manjinder Singh regularly, during the latter’s nine-month long stay in Baghdad and Mosul during 2013-14. She claims that during these conversations he had informed her of the difficult condition that they were in because of the war between the Iraqi forces and the Islamic State fighters. She claims that said the two men needed to be questioned to find out the truth of the massacre that was blamed on the IS. “I was told by my brother on the phone that the quarrel over return continued for months before the city of Mosul fell to ISIS. Manjinder even told me that Harjeet wanted to escape leaving them in Iraq and they stopped him from fleeing,” she recalled.