Taliban Killing:Kummanam Rajasekharan to seek Presidents’s intervention

 Kochi, Dec 09

The Hindu Aikya Vedi General Secretary, Mr Kummanam Rajasekharan, is to meet the President, Dr A P J Abdul Kalam to seek his intervention to get the compensation to the wife of Manikandan Raman Kutty who was abducted and killed by the Taliban militants.

Mr Rajasekharan told HK today that he would be leaving for Delhi next week and expected to call on the President some time the week after. He said that the killing of the Border Road Organization (BRO) driver in Afghanistan was shrouded by mysteries. 

According to him Maniappan was sent to the militant infested war ravaged country on a two-year contract on a monthly salary of Rs50,000. Even at this rate the compensation on this account alone should have come to Rs 12 lakh . He was brutally murdered about one month after his joining duty there.

He said that there were conflicting reports on who had kidnapped and killed Maniappan. In a report Taliban was quoted to have said that it did not carry out the killing of Maniappan. “In that case who has done this heinous act?”, Kummanam asked.

The reconstruction of Afghanisthan is done under the UN initiative the works have been allotted to different governments also by the UN. In the case of abduction and killing of Maniappan the United Nations also therefore has the responsibility to find out what had actually happened, he said.

He said that had the Indian government acted on time and promptly with the same spirit and vigour it had shown in getting Mr Sijo released from the US captivity in Iraq and the concerted efforts it is currently taking to get the punishment to Nausad by the Saudi Arabiaian government reduced, perhaps Maniappan would not have been killed by the Afghan militants. Mr Sijo had told the media here that he was well treated by the American soldiers when they came to know that he was a Roman Catholic. 

He alleged that the Central government had taken a impervious attitude in his case as the Indian Embassy in Afghanistan should have swung into action to establish a communication channel with the kidnappers who had given 48 hours time to meet their demands. Instead, the embassy reportedly waited for the militants to contact the mission.

Given these factors the government should have to come out with a white paper on the whole issue. “I am meeting the President to seek his intervention. I want to present these facts before Dr Abdul Kalam”, he said