Taliban abducts Indian engineer

April 29, 2006

An Indian engineer working in Afghanistan was kidnapped on Friday evening while travelling from, the capital of province, to. A. Suryanarayana works for a Bahraini telecommunications and construction firm, Al Mayyad. According to the Chinese news agency Xinhua,, a spokesman for the Taliban, has claimed responsibility.

Later, another spokesman for the Taliban, threatened to kill Suryanarayana within hours if their demand that all Indian citizens leave Afghanistan within 24 hours is not met. The abducted man's wife has said that she and her three children will commit suicide if anything untoward happens to her husband. A team of Indian experts headed by the Joint Secretary of the Ministry of External Affairs, K.B.S. Katoch, has been dispatched to Afghanistan to facilitate the release of Suryanarayana.