This is the story of Sushmita Banerjee, an educated Bengali girl from a respectable Brahmin family. Educated at St. Joseph’s Convent, she was deeply interested in medecine, especially in gynaecology. Though she never became a doctor, she learnt biology at the Asansol Girls’ College. In her free time she used to assist her doctor uncle in his chamber.

She got married with a boy of the same community whom she used to know from a young age. But the marriage did not work and she changed jobs, working as a theater artiste, and then in a detective agency and so on. While working as an artiste in the theater, she had won the Uttam Kumar and Priyadarshini Indira Awards. And it so happened that she fell in love with a Pathan man, a money-lender by profession (now let us not discuss here the subject of money-lending being forbidden in Islam), Janbaz Khan by name. The marriage took place in secret and at the civil court; when her father came to know about it, he turned livid with anger and finally she was disowned by her father. With her Afghan money-lender husband, Sushmita came to Afghanistan to live in her husband’s country.

There she discovered Afghanistan for the first time. Janbaz Khan was the eldest in the family. All the other three brothers were also in the money-lending business. They settled down at Sarana village, some 18 hours journey by bus from Kabul. The population of Sarana was about 25,000. Although Janbaz’s family did not like the idea of having a Hindu daughter in law, they treated her warmly. Daily conversation was some problem. The women did not know a word of Hindi while Afghan men generally spoke some Hindi, making life a little easier for Sushmita.

She says, in the article:”Afghanistan is beautiful but incredibly primitive. It has a very harsh environment. Apart from raisins, apples and nuts, hardly anything else grows there. The food is very basic. They make thick rotis the size of a center table and generally eat boiled meat and potatoes cooked with salt and onions. They never use chillies, ginger, garlic and hardly any green vegetables. Once, after a visit to Pakistan, I brought home a cauliflower. Janbaz’s family thought it was a flower and refused to eat it!”

Her first year in Afghanistan (1990-1991) was a relatively happy one. There were a few irritants such as an uncle in law refusing to accept a glass of water from her hands ‘because you are a Hindu’. But the couple had good times too. They packed in a trip to Pakistan where Sushmita picked up some medecines and equipment. She was appalled by the total lack of medical attention in Sarana, especially for women, and she thought that she could provide help to at least some of them.

“Janbaz’s cousin died quite needlessly during childbirth leaving behind two small children,” Sushmita says. “I thought I could help avoid such sad incidents because I had a few years of medical experience behind me. This won me a lot of love and affection in Sarana.”

The war with the Russians soured everything . The mujahideens took over and Janbaz fled to Calcutta out of fear, leaving Sushmita behind, all by herself. In 1993, the Taliban took over the country. Life became very difficult for everyone, specially womenfolk. They labeled Sushmita an enemy of Islam, because Sushmita refused to wear the burqa (or veil). They wanted Sushmita to close down her dispensary. On her refusal, the Taliban destroyed the dispensary. The mujahids were more reasonable than the Taliban. One day in 1995, a few men from the Taliban came to Sushmita’s house and attacked her physically. “Two men stood on top of me and beat me mercilessly while the others pulled at my hair. Other women of the house just watched as mute spectators. They were too scared. I don’t know what would have happened if a senior leader, Dranai Khan, who was like the local panchayet leader, had not intervened. Dranai Khan was fond of me for my work among the sick women. The Taliban, on that occasion, could not continue and fled.”

The Taliban, however, kept up with Sushmita’s persecution. After Janbaz had left, Sushmita’s relationship with her brothers in law deteriorated. They made a practice of robbing Sushmita of her earnings at the dispensary. Sushmita’s problems persisted because she was not able to contact Janbaz who was in Calcutta. Life appeared to be really bleak. “One fine morning, a man in the neighborhood organized a car so that I could escape to Pakistan and then to India. I would not mention his name for his safety. I knew Islamabad fairly well than I knew Kabul. I had traveled to Islamabad twice with Janbaz. Besides, there are no travel restrictions between Afghanistan and Pakistan. You do not need a visa or a passport to travel between the two countries and a majority of the Afghans who fled their country were refugees in Pakistan.

“I went to the Indian Embassy as soon as I reached Islamabad but since it was a Friday, the national holiday in Pakistan, it was closed. Fearing trouble if I was caught on the streets, I went to a police station and told my story to the inspector there. He told me that since he was only an inspector, he could not help me, but he would take me to the superintendent of police who would be better placed to advise me. The SP in turn arranged for me to stay the night at the inspector’s house with his mother and sister. He promised to take me to the Indian Embassy the next morning. But unfortunately the man at the Indian Embassy was very unhelpful. He told me flatly that he could not help me. I was frantic. I did not have a passport because I had traveled with documents attached to my husband’s passport but I showed him my photographs, my ration card, my school certificate, my bank statement, but he was unmoved. I then pleaded with him to take me to the ambassador. He refused to do that too. He took me to an officer but the officer did nothing. He told me to go back to Kabul. And as I had feared, my brothers in law and the Taliban tracked me down. They were waiting outside the gate of the Indian Embassy. The Pakistani policeman who had accompanied me offered to send me to Kashmir. I turned down his offer for I thought that in Kashmir, I would be taken as a spy and shot dead. I had no option but to surrender to my brothers in law..”

Now Sushmita had to face even more oppression. “I was kept confined in a small room. They gave me food but I could not go outside the house in daytime. After about four months, I made another attempt to flee. I found the front door of the house locked and I ran all the way to Saloo which is quite a distance from Sarana. Here I was caught by a man who promised to help me but instead locked me up in his house and called the Taliban. Some members of the Taliban shouted that ‘the woman has to be killed’. I was really desperate now. I noticed an AK47 and grabbed it and threatened the Taliban and told them that I had already sent by registered mail a letter to my government in Islamabad telling them what was going on here. If anything happened to me, not a single Khan in Afghanistan would be left alive. I was of course taking a gamble but it worked. Afghans are big and large but very cowardly, so when I had a gun in my hand, they didn’t want to take a chance.”

Luckily for Sushmita, she had a god-father in Dranai Khan. He gave her eight lakh Afghan rupees which is equivalent to about 12,000 Indian rupees. “He also organized a counterfeit Afghan passport for me. The visa officer guessed that I was an Indian and not an Afghan. He said ‘No Afghan woman has this confidence or can speak so well.’ But he gave me the visa anyway.

“I flew to Delhi on August 7, 1995, on an Afghan Airlines flight. My husband had been informed about my arrival by Dranai Khan and he had come to the Delhi airport to receive me. I was furious with him and the first thing I told him was, ‘I want a divorce’. He told me that he would give me a divorce if that is what I really wanted but I had to listen to his side of the story first. He then told me how frightened he was to return to Afghanistan from Calcutta because he knew that the Taliban would wipe out the entire family.”

According to Sushmita, there are about 2,000 to 4,000 Indian women in Sarana alone, not counting the whole of Afghanistan, living in truly miserable conditions. “All these women are married to Afghan men. These men have two or three wives and the Indian women have to live with these other wives. Half the Afghan men do not live in the village as they are either in India or Pakistan. The women are regularly beaten by their in laws. They do not have any means of fleeing to India. They do not even get decent food to eat.”

Sushmita has, however, emerged from her ordeal stronger than ever. She has fought oppression with awsome courage and makes an inspiring story if ever there was one. (Reporter: Gitanjali Prasad)

Here the Truth Detector has a few questions to ask to the current Foreign Minister of India. Have we found out the name of the bastard who would do nothing for Sushmita when she went to the Indian Embassy at great risk to herself, for the papers? Are we sure that the man was NOT a relation of Kuldip Nayyar’s? Are we improving upon the quality of our foreign office employees now, at all? No doubt, during the days of V.P. Singh, Chandrasekhar et al, India’s Foreign Office became burdened with all kinds of animals. Are we cleaning up the place now?