Will believe my brother is dead when MEA contacts me, says one of the abducted Indian's sister

Gurpinder Kaur, the sister of one of the 39 Indians killed in Iraq, today said she finds it difficult to believe her brother is no more because External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj had assured her for years that he is alive.

Gurpinder, who heard the news on television, said she will believe her brother is actually dead only when the ministry contacts her.

Swaraj said in a statement in the Rajya Sabha today that 39 Indians, abducted by ISIS in Iraq's Mosul town three years ago, are dead and their bodies have been recovered.

Forty Indians were abducted by the terror organisation but one of them escaped by posing as a Muslim from Bangladesh, Swaraj said in a statement in the upper house.

"I heard this on television. Until the MEA (Ministry of External Affairs) does not contact me, I will not believe this," Gurpinder, whose brother Manjinder Singh was in the group, said.

The minister, she added, had been saying all along that he was alive and they are tracing the location.

"Now, I don't know what to believe," she told the media.

--ANI

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