India in touch with Afghan authorities

New Delhi, Apr 29 (UNI) India is in constant touch with the Afghanistan government to secure the release of the telecom engineer who was kidnapped by the Taliban in Southern Afghanistan yesterday, even as his fate continued to be unknown.

Minister of State for External Afairs E Ahamed, who is campaigning for elections in Kerala, told UNI on phone that the Indian government had got in touch with the Afghan authorities and was also maintaining constant contact with its embassy in Kabul.

Reports from Kabul said local authorities and Afghan forces had also launched a massive manhunt for the kidnapped engineer.

The Indian national, A Suryanayana, from Hyderabad, working on Afghanistan's mobile phone network for a Bahraini company, was abducted yesterday at about 1700 hrs local time on the Kabul-Kandahar highway in Sharjoy district of Zabul province.

Gunmen stopped his car while he was travelling to Ghazni and kidnapped him and his Afghan driver. Later, Taliban militants called up some newspapers offices in Kabul and claimed that they had abducted the Indian national.

They had said his fate would be decided by higher Taliban authorities.

He is the third Indian national who has been seized by the Taliban in Afghanistan during the past four months.

Maniappan Raman Kutty, a Border Roads Organisation (BRO) engineer working on the Zaranj-Delaram road project, was kidnapped by the Taliban in November last year. His body was found three days later.

In February this year, an Indian engineer Bharath Kumar working with a Turkish company, was killed in bomb explosion.

After Kutty's killing, India raised the matter of the security of its nationals working on various projects in Afghanistan with the Afghan government.

The matter was also discussed with Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai during his recent state visit here. He assured the Indian government that Kabul would take adequate measures for the security of Indians working in Afghanistan.

UNI PMD/RB RR KN1519