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Congress to bring privilege motion against Swaraj for ‘lying’ to Parliament, families over Indians killed in Iraq
Congress president Rahul Gandhi has accused the government of “inventing” his party’s links to British firm Cambridge Analytica, which is in the middle of a data-breach storm, to divert attention from the issue.
The Congress would bring a privilege motion against external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj for misleading Parliament and the families of 39 Indians who were killed in Iraq, senior party leader Ambika Soni said on Thursday.
The motion would be moved in the Rajya Sabha, a party leader said.
The statement came a few hours after Congress president Rahul Gandhi accused the government of “inventing” his party’s links to British firm Cambridge Analytica, which is in the middle of a data-breach storm, as it was caught “lying” on missing Indians.
The Congress has accused the government and Swaraj of giving false hope to the families and delay in announcing the death of the workers who were abducted by Islamic State in Mosul in 2014 when the group overran large swathes of Iraq.
Swaraj had informed Parliament on Tuesday that the men were dead after DNA samples of the family members matched those of the bodies found in a mass grave near Mosul.
The minister, who had earlier maintained the government would not declare the men dead till it had strong evidence, has said the search for bodies could not have begun until Mosul was liberated.
The northern Iraqi city was freed of IS in July 2017 after a bitter nine-month battle and it was after that the government started collecting DNA samples of the family members of the missing men.
As reported by Hindustan Times on March 22, the men were shot, most of them in the head. Dr Zaid Ali Abbas of Iraq’s department of forensic medicine told HT that most of the bodies had gunshot wounds to the head”.
“Forensically, I can confirm that they definitely died over a year ago,’’ Abbas said over the phone.
