Suryanarayan's body to be brought here tomorrow

New Delhi, Apr 30 (UNI) The body of K Suryanarayan, the Indian telecom engineer who was kidnapped and executed by Taliban in Afghanistan, will be brought here tomorrow and sent to Hyderabad, officials said here today.

The body will be sent to Hyderabad, Suryanarayan's home town, where his wife lives alongwith her three children.

Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran told a hurriedly-called press conference here earlier that whatever arrangements were required to be made for bringing the body here, would be made.

The 41-year old Indian national, K Suryanayan, from Hyderabad, working on Afghanistan's mobile phone network for a Bahraini engineering and IT company, Al Moayed, was abducted on Friday at about 1700 hrs local time (1800 Hrs IST) 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 newspaper offices in Kabul and claimed that they had abducted the Indian national.

Al Moayed is currently undertaking a project for Roshan Telecom, an Afghan mobile telephone service provider.

Mr Suryanarayan had gone to the site, about 60 km from Ghazni, at 1330 hrs.

Mr Suryanarayan is the third Indian national who was 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 a 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 RB SC KN1612