Want to ask why she lied to me: Sister

New Delhi: The sister of one of the 39 Indians abducted and killed by the Islamic State in Iraq has accused the Narendra Modi government of building "false hope" and keeping the families in the dark for over three years. "The Modi government is culpable of building false hope and keeping us in the dark for nearly four years. They cheated us," said Gurpinder Kaur, crying inconsolably. "Whenever I met (external affairs minister) Sushma Swaraj, she told me that all the 39 missing Indians were alive and their locations were known. I want to confront her and ask her why she lied to me," Kaur told The Telegraph over phone from Gurdaspur in Punjab. Her brother Gurcharan Singh from Amritsar was one of the 39 killed. At a news conference later in the day, Sushma sought to remind the families that back in 2014 itself she had said in Parliament that she had no evidence of them being alive or dead. The anger of the families is justified, the minister said, adding that she had repeatedly told them that "I have no evidence of their being either dead or alive". "Our government did not want to declare them 'missing and believed to be killed'," Sushma said. "It was not falsehood but a tireless effort, the kind of effort that has never been made in this country," she said. On July 22, 2015, junior external affairs minister V.K. Singh had told the Lok Sabha that "as per latest information from multiple third-party sources, they (the 39 Indians) are all safe. The government is making all efforts and taking all steps to secure their release". As soon as the news of their death spread, their families accused the government of misleading them. "They misled us for three years by giving false assurances despite knowing that they were dead long ago," said Sarwan Singh, brother of 30-year-old Nishan Singh, another of those slain. Sarwan said the government never came clean and deliberately kept the families in the dark. "Why is the minister (Sushma) not revealing the dates when their bodies were found? The government's duplicity on the issue has been exposed," said Sarwan, a resident of Amritsar. Devender, a family member of another of those killed, said the government had intentionally hidden the truth. "It seems they did it to save the image of the government and their failure to locate the 39 abducted men. They kept on releasing statement after statement - first they said the 39 men were alive and had taken shelter in a church, then claimed that they were in a jail, but never provided any evidence that they were alive," Devender said. Referring to Sushma's statement in the Lok Sabha, he said: "What evidence the government had when they claimed that all the 39 men were alive?" -The Telegraph, India