Kidnapped Indian engineer found beheaded in Afghanistan

0 Comments | Asian Political News, Nov 28, 2005

KABUL, Nov. 23 Kyodo

The beheaded body of an Indian man kidnapped last weekend by Taliban militants was found Wednesday by local police in southern Afghanistan, an Afghan official said.

''We have found a beheaded body, which seems to be of the kidnapped Indian,'' Mohammad Hashim, chief of police in Khashrod District of Nimroz Province, told Kyodo News by telephone.

He spoke a day after Taliban spokesman announced the execution of Maniappan Raman Kutty, who worked for an Indian road construction company in that province where he was abducted from his car along with his two guards and a driver on Saturday.

In New Delhi, the Indian External Affairs Ministry confirmed Kutty's death and said, ''We strongly condemn this inhuman and barbaric act against an innocent person.''

''The government of India expresses deep shock and profound grief at the tragic death of one of its citizens who was working on an India-Afghan friendship project with utmost devotion and diligence,'' a statement from the ministry said.

''The Taliban and its backers bear the responsibility for the consequences of this outrageous act,'' it said.

Kutty, a native of Allepey town in the southern Indian state of Kerala, was a driver with the Indian Army-affiliated Border Roads Organization, which carries out road construction projects in border areas of India. He was involved with the construction of a highway project in Afghanistan.

On Saturday, the Taliban had set a 48-hour deadline for the BRO to pull out of Afghanistan, and on Tuesday evening, a Taliban spokesman told the Afghan Islamic Press that Kutty was killed after the deadline expired at 6 p.m.

The fate of the three Afghans kidnapped with him was still unknown, the district's police chief said.

In all, about 290 Indians are engaged in various projects in Afghanistan, with the bulk of them being BRO personnel working on the Delaram-Herat-Kandahar highway seeking to link Iran's Makran coast with Afghan heartland, according to the Press Trust of India.

The abduction was the latest in a string of kidnappings in southern Afghanistan. A British engineer working on a road project and two Japanese tourists were kidnapped and killed in August.