An Indian woman who wrote a memoir on her escape from the Taliban was fatally shot at her home in Afghanistan, BBC News reported.
Sushmita Banerjee published "Kabuliwalar Bengali Bou" ("A Kabuliwala's Bengali Wife"), which documented her dramatic escape in 1995 and became a bestseller in India. It was also made into a Bollywood movie, "Escape From Taliban," in 2003.
Police officials said Taliban militants invaded her home in Kharana, tied her husband and family members up, and forced Banerjee outside where they shot and killed her. The militants then dropped her body off at a religious school.
Banerjee, 49, had recently moved back to Afghanistan with her husband, Jaanbaz Khan. According to a police official, she was employed as a health worker and was currently filming the lives of women in the area for work. Banerjee was also going by the name Sayed Kamala.
The Taliban reportedly told BBC that they were not responsible for Banerjee's death.
In addition to her book and film adaptation, Banerjee also published an article in Outlook magazine in 1998. She wrote that "life was tolerable until the Taliban crackdown in 1993," when militants forced her to shut down a dispensary she ran from home. They also called her a "woman of poor morals."
Banerjee said she left the Taliban sometime in 1994 and traveled to the Indian embassy in Islamabad for help but was caught by her brothers-in-law who took her back to Afghanistan.
"They promised to send me back to India. But they did not keep their promise. Instead, they kept me under house arrest and branded me an immoral woman. The Taliban threatened to teach me a lesson. I knew I had to escape," she wrote.
