Modi monitored India's efforts for release of Kerala nurses
The Indian security establishment used its ties with counterparts in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the US to negotiate the release of the nurses, and progress was personally monitored by the PM, sources told HT. 200 Indians return, another 400 to arrive soon
The Indian security establishment used its ties with counterparts in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United States to negotiate the release of the nurses, and progress was personally monitored by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, government sources told HT.
India worked with the three countries because they have had a line in to the Islamic State in Syria and the Levant (ISIS) from the days the hardline group was fighting their common enemy, the Bashar al-Assad government in Syria. The Americans also have a significant presence on the ground in Iraq.
After the ISIS fighters picked up the Indian nurses from a Tikrit hospital on Thursday with the intention of moving them to captivity in Mosul, the Indian establishment swung into action, working the phones to their friends in the region to get the bus diverted to the Kurdish border.
The nurses were set free at the border between 6 and 7pm Friday and escorted to Erbil airfield by Indian diplomatic and security staff. South Block officials denied any ransom was paid. The ministry of external affairs had maintained close contact with foreign ministries in the region, it is learnt.
While the nurses have made a safe exit from the war zone, the ISIS fighters are still holding Turkish diplomats hostage and the fate of 39 Indian labourers from Punjab is unknown.
{{/usCountry}}
{{#usCountry}}
While the nurses have made a safe exit from the war zone, the ISIS fighters are still holding Turkish diplomats hostage and the fate of 39 Indian labourers from Punjab is unknown.
{{/usCountry}}
“All I can say is that it is thanks to the goodwill that we have in the region that the lives of the nurses were secured,” said a senior Indian official, adding that countries in the region were also willing to help because they wanted to build a rapport with the new government in Delhi.
Watch: Freed Indian nurses reach Kochi from Iraq, welcomed by Kerala CM
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.
Get the latest World News, breaking headlines and global updates from the US, UK, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Russia and other countries. Follow major international events on Hindustan Times.
Get the latest World News, breaking headlines and global updates from the US, UK, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Russia and other countries. Follow major international events on Hindustan Times.
