It is a sin to declare anyone dead without solid proof, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said while making a suo motu statement in Lok Sabha on Wednesday on the 39 Indians missing in Mosul, Iraq since 2014.

Shunning allegations of “misleading” the country on the issue, an assertive Swaraj said: “Whatever I have done is with the permission of the House. I repeatedly told the House that I don’t have solid proof of either – their being killed or being alive”

She said as of now no concrete evidence had emerged to conclude that the 39 Indians abducted from Mosul three years ago had been killed, and said she would “not commit the sin” of declaring them dead without any proof.

Swaraj said the government would continue its efforts to trace the missing Indians, most of them ​construction labourers ​from Punjab, until it gets evidence of their death, adding that the Iraqi Foreign Minister had assured her of pursuing the matter. “This file will not close till there is proof that the 39 Indians are dead,” she said,

The Minister was making a statement after reports after Iraq’s recapture of Mosul that the jail in Badush where the Indians were reportedly lodged had been destroyed.

“The jail has been destroyed (after ISIS took control of it). But were they still there? How many inmates were there, how many were shifted or killed? These are all unanswered questions,” she said, adding that Iraq’s Foreign Minister had said that they “do not have concrete information whether they (Indians) are alive or not. He never said they are dead. He told me that in Iraq it is said that wait is worse than death,” Swaraj said.

She informed the House that Minister of State for External Affairs V K Singh was sent to Iraq days after the Iraqi Prime Minister announced victory in the fight to recapture Mosul from ISIS.

Swaraj said she had also met the family members of the abducted Indians 12 times and had told them that there was no proof to conclude that the Indians were dead.

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