Most of the victims belonged to the lower middle class of society.
Gyan Kaur (C) reacts to the confirmation of the death of her husband Balwant Rai in Khan Ke village some 20kms from Jalandhar. The bodies of 39 Indian construction workers kidnapped in Iraq in 2014 by the Islamic State group were found in a grave in the village of Badush, northwest of the city of Mosul, and taken to a local organisation for DNA testing. (Photo: AFP)
Having spent lakhs of rupees for a “foreign job”, family members of Punjab men killed by ISIS in Mosul city of Iraq are facing a bleak future with the main breadwinners of the families gone.
The family of Surjit Mainka, a resident of Churuwali village in Jalandhar, said they had spent Rs. 4.5 lakh for sending the 35-year-old to Iraq.
“We go abroad to earn money. So, we didn’t mind borrowing money for sending him (Surjit) to Iraq. As a labourer, he worked there at a company for 10 months before being captured by the ISIS in June 2014. Now, not only have we lost Surjit, but the amount borrowed for him has also gone up to about Rs. 9 lakh. We really don’t know how to return this money now,” Surjit’s wife Manjit Kaur (36), told The Statesman over the phone.
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She said her husband had little apprehension of the tragic end even as the atmosphere was tense in Iraq at that time since the rise of the ISIS. “His employers didn’t give the passports back to let him come back and asked the staff to stay indoors to avoid any mishap. But then one day ISIS kidnapped all of them,” she added.
Family members of another victim, Rakesh, a resident of Qadian in Gurdaspur, had spent over Rs 2 lakh for sending their only son abroad. “He used to work as a construction worker there and earn about Rs 20 thousand a month. Four months were all he worked before his abduction. I am also a daily wage and we have no land. So, Rs 2 lakh is a big amount for me and I don’t know how will I manage life after this,” said a family member of Rakesh.
Most of the victims’ family members said they were in touch with them until about 15 June 2014 when things took an ugly turn. The father of Parvinder Kumar, Jeet Ram, a resident of Jagatpur village in Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar district, said his son was promised good work in Mosul.
“He used to work as a welder and we paid Rs 2 lakh to an agent in Hoshiarpur for arranging work visa in Iraq. Initially, he was forced to work as a domestic servant and then sent to Mosul to work in a company,” he said.
Most of the family members of those killed by ISIS in Iraq have been contacted by the district administrations concerned and told to be ready to collect their mortal remains in Amritsar.
The Union External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj had informed the Parliament on Tuesday that all 39 Indians who went missing in the war-torn Iraqi city of Mosul in 2014 are dead. As many as 24 of these men are from Punjab where foreign jobs are a craze.
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