Kidnapped Indian in Afghanistan freed

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, September 29

Indian businessman Bansari Lal Arendeh, who was reportedly kidnapped at gunpoint a fortnight ago, was released on Wednesday, said Indian World Forum (IWF) president Puneet Singh Chandhok, who had taken up his case.

Bansari Lal is with his elder brother Ashok Lal, he said.

Based in Faridabad after shifting from Afghanistan, the family had taken Indian citizenship but the two brothers kept running a modestly flourishing business in Kabul for nearly two decades. At its peak, the Arendeh brothers had employed 10 to 15 Afghans, said sources.

Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee president Manjnder Singh Sirsa had also forcefully taken up his case and had remained in touch with the Arendeh family as well as other Hindu and Sikh families in Kabul.

It was Sirsa who had confirmed Bansari Lal’s abduction by five gunmen who forced him into a car in front of his shop in Kabul and took him away.

With its credentials to provide security in Kabul under challenge after the airport attacks as also quell apprehensions that its men were behind the kidnapping, the Taliban had announced that it had entrusted the case to a so-called elite team.