Indian Diarist Shot dead in Afghanistan

An Indian woman, Sushmita Banerjee who
wrote a popular memoir about her escape
from the Taliban, has been shot dead in
Afghanistan by suspected militants, police
say.

Banerjee, who was married to an Afghan
businessman, was killed outside her home
in Paktika province.
The book about her dramatic escape in
1995 became a best-seller in India and was
made into a Bollywood film in 2003.

Banerjee had recently moved back to
Afghanistan to live with her husband.
A senior police official told the BBC that
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.
Police said Taliban militants arrived at her
home in the provincial capital, Kharana, tied
up her
husband and other members of the
family, took Banerjee out and shot her.

They dumped her body near a religious
school, police added.
The Taliban have told the BBC they did not
carry out the attack on Ms Banerjee.
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.

She was the subject of the 2003 Bollywood
film, Escape From Taliban.
Starring actress, Manisha Koirala, the film
described itself as a "story of a woman
who dares [the] Taliban".
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.
"One night, I made a tunnel through the
mud walls of the house and fled. Close to
Kabul, I was arrested. A 15-member group
of the Taliban interrogated me. Many of
them said that since I had fled my
husband's home, I should be executed.
However, I was able to convince them that
since I was an Indian, I had every right to
go back to my country," Banerjee wrote.
"The interrogation continued through the
night. The next morning, I was taken to the
Indian embassy from where I was given a
safe passage. Back in Calcutta, I was re-
united with my husband. I don't think he
will ever be able to go back to his family."

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