Indian Engineer Abducted by Taliban Found Dead in Kandahar

An Indian engineer, Mr. Suryanarayana, working for a Bahrain-based company was kidnapped by the Taliban at gunpoint near Kandahar on Friday while working on a project in Afghanistan.

Quoting the Indian Ambassador to Afghanistan Rakesh Sood, CNN/IBN and other news sources reported this morning that Mr. Suryanarayana has been killed and his body found in Kandhahar. News channels are also reporting that the Taliban has claimed to have killed the hostage as he tried to escape from captivity. The as-yet unidentified beheaded body was found by a highway police patrol.

TV channels are also reporting that the Indian Prime Minister's Office has issued a condemnation of the killing.

According to media reports, the Taliban had claimed that Mr Suryanarayana was an American spy. The Taliban had demanded that all Indians leave Afghanistan by 6 p.m. Sunday local time and had threatened to kill Mr Suryanarayan if their demands were not met.

The Indian government was still in the process of figuring out its options and had sent a three member team late last night to the Indian Embassy in Afghanistan to assist the Embassy in negotiating with the kidnappers when the news of this killing hit the news channels. The Indian government's position was that it would not pull out of Afghanistan and would continue to help Afghanistan and its people rebuild.

There is still no word on why the deadline for the Taliban's demands had been unilaterally advanced by the Taliban.

TV news channels have been showing pictures of the slain engineer's family in talks with the Andhra Pradesh government. A few minutes ago, the pictures switched to heart wrenching pictures of the family discovering the news through the news ticker on the TV news channels. First the look of disbelief as they are trying to read the ticker and then horror as they realize what it means.

Article Author: Sujatha Bagal

Sujatha Bagal is a writer based in the Washington, D.C. suburbs. She also blogs about parenting, travel, books, movies, food and politics at Blogpourri, which she started in Bangalore to document life as an expat in that city.

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