(AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed)

A casket holding one of 38 Indians abducted by the Islamic State group in 2014, that were found in a mass grave outside Mosul, is loaded on a truck to be transported from Baghdad's main morgue to the Baghdad airport, in Iraq, Sunday, April 1, 2018. Indian Central Industrial Security Force personnel carry the coffin of Indian citizen Hemraj, who was killed in Iraq, at the International Airport in Amritsar on Monday (AFP photo)

AMRITSAR, India — The bodies of 38 Indian construction workers kidnapped and murdered in Iraq by the Daesh terrorist group returned home on Monday four years after their disappearance. “I am going to Mosul to get mortal remains of 38 Indians,” XNews TV channel quoted Singh as saying, adding that the body of another dead worker will not be reclaimed now as “his case is pending.”

Singh stressed that the Indian government will hand over “coffins (of slain workers) to the family members with evidence so that they have no doubts about it.” He also offered condolences to the families of the deceased. 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.
Indian Minister of State for External Affairs V.K. Singh travels to Iraq to reclaim the bodies of 38 workers abducted in Mosul by ISIL in 2016 after they were found in a mass grave near Badush last month.