Indian national Sushmita Banerjee, whose memoir about her dramatic escape from the Taliban was turned into a Bollywood film, was shot dead in Afghanistan by suspected militants, the police said on Thursday.
Banerjee, 49, was killed outside her Paktika province home. She was married to Afghan businessman Jaanbaz Khan and had recently moved back to Afghanistan to live with him.
Taliban militants arrived at her home in the provincial capital of Kharana, tied up her husband and other family members, took Banerjee out and shot her, the police was quoted as saying by the BBC.
The militants dumped Banerjee’s body near a religious school, the police said. A senior official said Banerjee, also known as Sayed Kamala, was working as a health worker in Paktika and was filming the lives of local women as part of her work. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.
Banerjee’s Kabuliwalar Bangali Bou (A Kabuliwala’s Bengali Wife), about her escape from the Taliban in 1995, became a bestseller in India and was made into a Bollywood film Escape From Taliban in 2003. It focused on her life in Afghanistan with her husband and her escape from militants. The film based on the book starred actress Manisha Koirala and was billed as a “story of a woman who dares (the) Taliban”.