‘All Indians must leave within 24 hours’ : Taliban’s ultimatum

Kandahar, April 29: Taliban militants will kill an Indian engineer being held hostage in southern Afghanistan if all Indians don’t leave Afghanistan within 24 hours, a purported spokesman for the insurgent group said Saturday.

Qari Yousaf Ahmadi, who releases regular statements on behalf of outlawed Taliban fighters, accused the Indian contractor, who was abducted Friday in the southern Zabul province, of being an ‘American spy’.

“We warn all Indians working here to leave Afghanistan within 24 hours starting 6 pm (1330GMT) Saturday otherwise we will kill him,” Ahmadi said after contacting The Associated Press by telephone.

India’s Ambassador to Kabul, Rakesh Sood, said the threat was “not a very positive development.”.

Sood identified the hostage as K. Surya Narayana, a father of three from Hyderabad aged in his early 40s, who had been employed here since January by a Bahrain-based company, al-Moayed. The firm has been contracted by an Afghan mobile phone company, Roshan, to expand its mobile phone network across volatile provinces in southern Afghanistan.

Sood said that he was in contact with officials from Roshan, the Afghan government and the US military to secure the captive’s release.

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