SHIMLA, India, 23 July 2004 — Distraught family members of one of three Indians being held hostage by militants in Iraq made a fervent appeal for help yesterday, as the Indian government began campaigning for their release.

“Ever since we have learned about the incident the entire family has been in a state of shock. Please help us,” said farmer Ram Dass, an uncle of Antaryami, one of the hostages.

Dass was speaking by phone from his native village in Una district, about 220 kilometers from Shimla, capital of the northern hill state of Himachal Pradesh. “We learned about the incident this afternoon on television yesterday,” he said. “We haven’t yet heard from the company that hired my nephew in November 2003,” Dass said.

“He left home in November after completing his papers for heavy vehicle driving and called us only a couple of days ago,” Dass added. Indian Deputy Foreign Minister Edaepakath Ahmed has said India’s embassy in Baghdad and ambassador in Kuwait are trying to contact the Kuwait-headquartered transport firm Universal Services.

Senior state police official Anupam Sharma confirmed that one of the hostages being shown in pictures splashed in Indian newspapers and on television “definitely” resembles Antaryami.

A group calling itself “Black Flags” said Wednesday in a video aired by Al-Arabiya news channel that it had taken a group of truck drivers captive in Iraq.

The other two Indians have been identified as Tilak Raj and Sukhdev Singh and apparently hail from northern Punjab state. Indian Foreign Minister Natwar Singh went on air on Al-Jazeera and other Arab channels yesterday and made an appeal to the kidnappers to free the truckers.

The brother of Indian hostage Sukhdev Singh said he had read about the hostage-taking in the press. “We got to know about the kidnapping from the newspaper when we saw his photograph and read his name,” Harvinder Singh told Star News television from a village in the northern farm state of Punjab.

“We realized that he was our man and our brother.” Harvinder Singh said his debt-laden family had sold an acre of farmland to raise money to send Sukhdev Singh to the Gulf.

“We thought that we would be able to pay back our debts by him going (abroad) as we have a lot of debts. It has become very difficult for us. Now only the government will be able to help free Sukhdev Singh,” he said.

New Delhi, which has built close ties with the United States in recent years, has resisted sending troops, saying it had only sent soldiers abroad as part of UN peacekeeping forces.

Last year it insisted it could spare no troops because of the struggle against an uprising in the disputed region of Kashmir. The new left-leaning government that took office this year is even less likely to commit soldiers to Iraq. But Indians, including many based in the Gulf states, are known to have taken up jobs in Iraq. Officials said they had no idea how many Indians were working in Iraq.