PM announces Rs 10 Lakh compensation each for families of 39 Indians killed in Mosul

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday announced Rs 10 Lakh compensation each for families of 39 Indians killed in Mosul.

His announcement comes a day after VK Singh made insensitive comments. On demands of compensation, Singh had said on Monday that giving compensation is not the same as distributing biscuits.

Singh had arrived at Amritsar International airport on Monday along with the special aircraft carrying mortal remains of the deceased Indians. "We have been running a campaign through Ministry of External Affairs since 2014 to go abroad safe and trained. We have run a campaign to tell people not to go through illegal agents. One should not say so, but these 40 people had no record with an embassy, they went through an illegal agent. When you go through an illegal agent half the time we don't know who went where" he said.

On March 20, Sushma Swaraj informed the Parliament that the 39 Indians abducted by Islamic State in Mosul in Iraq were dead and their bodies have been recovered.

A group of 40 Indian workers, mostly from Punjab, and some Bangladeshi were taken hostage by ISIS when it overran Iraq's second largest city Mosul in 2014. Of the 40 Indians, one Harjit Masih from Gurdaspur had managed to escape and had claimed to have witnessed the massacre of the others. But the government rejected it.

OneIndia News