~By Kunal Rao

The Delhi High Court on Tuesday (May 29) sought to know from the Centre how many times junior foreign minister VK Singh had visited Iraq in 2014. The court was reacting to a plea which wanted the constitution of an SIT to probe the killing of 39 Indians in Iraq’s Mosul.

A bench of Acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice C Hari Shankar also asked the Centre to file a status report in this regard.

The court’s direction comes on a plea by advocate Mehmood Pracha who had alleged that citing security concerns, a delegation preaching communal harmony was restrained by the Centre to travel to the ISIS controlled territory. He claimed that the delegation intended to negotiate the safe release of Indian civilians in ISIS controlled territory.

However, the court said that it there is no provision under law by which the court can direct to constitute an SIT.

“Read the prayer… Under which provision of law is an SIT created? Show us any SIT that has jurisdiction to investigate case in another country?” the bench said.

To this the petitioner said that the CBI can do it. The government of India can request the Iraqi government to enquire into the matter.

Appearing for the Centre, Intelligence Bureau advocate Manik Dogra submitted that petitioner hasn’t seen the latest statement given by the Ministry of External Affairs. It said post-mortem were done by an NGO in Iraq. India is not the country which says “missing, presume dead”. “Till the time it is not confirmed totally that the person is dead we continue to believe they are alive,” he said.

Following this the bench had questioned to him to give some data on when the kidnapping took place and to bring some information about the deliberations of Singh.