We told Sushmita not to return to Afghanistan: Relative

Family members of author Sushmita Banerjee, who was shot dead by masked gunmen in Afghanistan, today claimed that they had asked her not to return to the troubled country, but she did not listen insisting that the situation had changed there.
"When Sushmita decided to return in January, we had told her not to return. But she argued that the situation has changed in Afghanistan in the past several years. Let me go. If I find that I can't stay, I will come back", Sushmita's sister-in-law Debalina said.
"We always lived here in tension thinking about the situation in Afghanistan. But when she rang up about a fortnight back, saying that the situation was normal, we felt assured. Sushmita was doing a paramedical job there," she told a news channel here.

Sushmita also wanted to write more on the people of Afghanistan and their lives, she said.
Asked about the Taliban's denial of involvement in the killing, she quipped, "It has to be seen if the Taliban was speaking the truth. It seemed that she was the target as nothing happened to other members of her in-laws' family".
She said they failed to contact Sushmita's husband Jaanbaz Khan in Afghanistan.

The police said in Kabul yesterday that Sushmita Banerjee, whose memoir about her dramatic escape from the Taliban was turned into a Hindi film, was shot dead in Afghanistan by militants.

Banerjee, 49, was killed outside her home in Paktika province.
The Taliban today denied killing Sushmita Banerjee, whose murder Afghan officials blamed on the insurgent militia fighting against the government for 12 years.
Banerjee's book "Kabuliwalar Bangali Bou" (A Kabuliwala's Bengali Wife), about her escape from the Taliban in 1995, became a bestseller in India and was made into a Hindi film "Escape From Taliban" in 2003.
A candle light vigil was observed in the city's Beliaghata area today to mourn the death of the writer who hailed from the city.