An Indian author Sushmita Banerjee, whose novel 'A Kabuliwala's Bengali Wife' became the best seller in which she depicted her six years' of life in Afghanistan and later how she managed to escape from there, was shot dead outside her home in Afghanistan's Paktika Province on Thursday.
Sushmita Banerjee was married to an Afghan businessman was living with her in Afghanistan where she was working as a health worker and used to run a clinic. She used to shoot the lives of women there.
According to the news reports, Banerjee may have been killed by the Taliban for writing a book about her dramatic escape in 1995 on which a move 'Escape from Taliban' starring Manisha Koirala, Nawab Shah was made in 2003. The film described itself as a "story of a woman who dares Taliban".
Banerjee had recently moved back to Afghanistan to live with her husband
Banerjee, who was also known as Sayed Kamala, according to a report in the Afghanistan Times, has been kidnapped by gunmen on Wedneday night from the Sray Kala area on the outskirts of Sharan, the provincial capital of Paktika. She was found dead on Thursday morning, said Police chief Brig. Gen. Daulat Khan Zadran.
He said an investigation into the incident had been opened, but the killers remained at large.
Women's Affairs Director Bibi Hawa Khoshiwal said Kamala was a volunteer health worker, who had no connection with any group or the government.
Strongly condemning the kidnap-murder incident, Khoshiwal urged security organs to ensure those responsible were brought to justice.
A resident of the village, declining to be identified, said Kamala was an Indian citizen. She had been living with her husband in the Sray Kala village after their marriage. Jaanbaz married Kamala after she converted to Islam, the resident said.
Banerjee, 49, became well-known in India for her memoir, A Kabuliwala's Bengali Wife, which recounted her life in Afghanistan with her husband Jaanbaz Khan.and her escape.
Banerjee also told her story in an article she wrote for Outlook magazine in 1998. She went to Afghanistan in 1989 after marrying Khan, whom she met in Calcutta.
She wrote that "life was tolerable until the Taliban crackdown in 1993" when the militants ordered her to close a dispensary she was running from her house and "branded me a woman of poor morals".
She wrote that she escaped "sometime in early 1994", but her brothers-in-law tracked her down in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, where she had arrived to seek assistance from the Indian embassy. They took her back to Afghanistan.
"They promised to send me back to India. But they did not keep their promise. Instead, they kept me under house arrest and branded me an immoral woman. The Taliban threatened to teach me a lesson. I knew I had to escape," she wrote.
It was shortly after that, she wrote, that she tried to escape from her husband's home, three hours from the capital, Kabul.
A resident of the village, declining to be identified, said Kamala was an Indian citizen.
With no Taliban spokesman immediately available for comments, he said the outrageous insurgents killed Kamala hours after her abduction, the Afghanistan Times said.
--With Agencies Inputs--
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