Indian author who wrote on her escape from Taliban killed in Afghanistan

Indian author Sushmita Banerjee,49,whose book about her escape from the Taliban was made into a Bollywood film,was shot dead by militants outside her home in Afghanistan’s Paktika province,police said Thursday.

Banerjee was married to Afghan businessman Jaanbaz Khan and had recently gone to live with him.

Suspected Taliban militants arrived at her home in the provincial capital of Kharana,tied up her husband and other members of the family,took Banerjee out and shot her,police were quoted as saying by BBC. The militants dumped Banerjee’s body near a religious school,police said.

A senior police officer said Banerjee,also known as Sayed Kamala,was working as a health worker in Paktika,and filming the lives of local women. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

Banerjee’s book Kabuliwalar Bangali Bou,about her escape from the Taliban in 1995,was made into a Bollywood film,Escape From Taliban,in 2003 starring actress Manisha Koirala.

Banerjee shifted from Kolkata to Afghanistan in 1989 after marrying Khan. In her book,she wrote that “life was tolerable until the Taliban crackdown in 1993,when 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 one night,after making “a tunnel through the mud walls of the house… Close to Kabul,I was arrested. A 15-member group of the Taliban interrogated me… I was able to convince them that since I was an Indian I had every right to go back to my country.”