The recent beheadings of two Japanese nationals – Haruna Yukawa and Kenji Goto by IS militants have sparked fresh concern over the safety of the 39 Indian construction workers abducted in Mosul last year.
Out of the total 40 workers adducted, one Harjit Masih successfully escaped and he claims that the rest of his co-workers have been slaughtered.
However, the same has not been confirmed by the official sources yet.
Since last year, several efforts have been made by different agencies to locate the workers. No concrete information, however, has come out till date.
Efforts were made to seek information from the cross-border traffickers linked to Turkey's Intelligence Services and NGO's working with refugees also. And, according to media reports, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) has also been working hard to connect with the regional intelligence services and locate the missing workers. However, there hasn't been any success on any of these fronts.
In November last year, it was claimed by External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj that the government has information from six distinct sources regarding the workers and none of them have confirmed the killings. She had also said that her information was based lists of names from individuals with business and personal interests in the area.
According to some media reports, MEA officials say that there is no proof of hostages being alive either.
They have also pointed out that even the Turkish and Iraqi intelligence services are providing limited help due to an obvious reason that war is a bigger concern for them as compared to lives of some Indian workers.
In private, both Syrian and Iraqi diplomats have pointed out that chances of the workers being alive are rare as most of the enslaved workers held by ISIS earlier had fled to safer places like Turkey and Kurdistan.
