Sushmita Banerjee, 49, was well-known for her memoir about her escape from Islamic extremist in 1995. Married to an Afghan businessman, after years of self-exile she returned to Afghanistan to live with her husband. The militants executed her in front of her house.

Kabul (AsiaNews) - Sushmita Banerjee, Indian woman who wrote a popular memoir about her escape from the Taliban, has been killed yesterday in Afghanistan by Islamic extremist. The woman, 49, has been shot dead outside her home in Kharana (Paktika province). No group claimed responsibility for the attack. However, according to preliminary reports Taliban militants arrived at her home, tied up her husband and other members of the family, took Ms. Banerjee out and shot her, police said. Afterwards, the militants dumped her body near a religious school.

The diarist was married to Afghan businessman Jaanbaz Khan, whom she met in Calcutta. A senior police official told that Ms. Banerjee, who was also known as Sayed Kamala, was working as a health worker in the province and had been filming the lives of local women as part of her work.

She became well-known in India for her memoir, A Kabuliwala's Bengali Wife, which recounted her life in Afghanistan with her husband and her escape from Talibans in 1195. In 2003 the book was the subject of the Bollywood film "Escape from Taliban".

Ms. Banerjee went to Afghanistan in 1989 after her wedding. 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 her "a woman of poor morals". In early 1994 she tried to escape a first time, 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, where is kept under house arrest and branded as "immoral woman".

It was shortly after that that she tried to escape again. One night, she made a tunnel through the mud walls of the house and fled. Close to Kabul, she was arrested. A 15-member group of the Taliban interrogated her and many of them said that since she had fled her husband's home,she should be executed. She was able to convince them that since she was an Indian, she had every right to go back to my country.

Next morning she was taken to the Indian embassy from where she could go back in Calcutta, where she was re-united with her husband. (NC)

 

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