Visit Indian Travel Sites
Goa,
Kerala,
Tamil Nadu,
Andhra Pradesh,
Delhi,
Rajasthan,
Uttar Pradesh,
Himachal Pradesh,
Assam,
Sikkim,
Madhya Pradesh,
Jammu & Kashmir
Karnataka
|
Taliban's Indian captive won his release by cooking curry | An Indian man, who spent 24 days as a captive of the Taliban, has revealed that though he was starved and
beaten in Afghanistan, he managed to persuade his tormentors to release him by cooking them curry. Somen Debnath says he spent more than three weeks blindfolded
strapped to a chair in a pitch-black 10ft by 10ft dungeon. He said that he was
travelling through Afghanistan as part of a five-year bicycle ride through 33
countries to promote Aids awareness. Armed militants assumed he was a spy and
kept him captive in Herat. Unable to understand his captors' commands, Debnath,
28, was regularly beaten for disobeying orders, starved and repeatedly told he
was going to die. But after realizing that one of his captors had a very basic
grasp of English, he convinced him to allow him to cook them all a meal. The Taliban
kidnappers were so impressed with his banquet they decided he was ''safe'' and
let him go. Debnath said: ''I cooked hot, spicy Indian food for them the way we
have it in the Sunderbans in India. They were very happy and told my interpreter
that I seemed to be a safe guy. In the meantime, I had chatted up the interpreter
and through our short exchanges, made it clear that I was just a man who was out
on adventure and had no intentions of harming their cause." ''The interpreter
must have passed this on and I was set free after 24 days. The first sunlight
which hit my eyes out in the open almost blinded me,'' he recalls Debnath, who
has a degree from India in zoology and fine arts, set off on his bike from his
village of Sunderbans in 2004. His plan was to visit 191 countries by 2020 to
highlight the plight of Aids across the globe and entered Afghanistan across the
Pakistan border earlier this year. Debnath will travel home to tell his family
of his ordeal, but has vowed to visit 191 countries before 2020. |
|
|
|
|
|