Sushmita Banerjee, also called Sushmita Bandhopadhya, was an Indian author who wrote about her experience fleeing the Taliban. On Thursday, police said she was shot dead by militants in Afghanistan. Police chief, Dawlat Khan Zadran, predicts Taliban rebels broke into her house, tied up her husband, and shot her, leaving her body outside a school around Sharana city.
49-year-old Banjeree was a health worker for women in the Paktika area. Her book, written in 1995, is entitled “A Kabuliwala’s Bengali Life,” and it received a great deal of praise, eventually becoming the Bollywood movie, “Escape From Taliban” in 2003. In the memoir, Benjeree talks about moving to Afghanistan in 1989 to be with her husband, and the persecution she endured by the Taliban. Banjeree did return to India, and then wrote for India’s Outlook magazine, further describing the unbearable conditions she lived under. She wrote, “I remember it was early that year that members of the Taliban came to our house. They had heard of the dispensary I was running from my house. I am not a qualified doctor. But I knew a little about common ailments, and since there was no medical help in the vicinity, I thought I could support myself and keep myself busy by dispensing medicines. The members of the Taliban who called on us were aghast that I, a woman, could be running a business establishment. They ordered me to close down the dispensary and branded me a woman of poor morals.” In the article, Banjeree also described the limitations placed on women, and how she could hardly leave her home, especially without an escort. “Virtually all interaction between men and women outside the confines of their own homes was banned,” she wrote. In an interview with rediff.com, Banjeree discussed her desire to make people aware of the conditions women in Afghanistan are living in, adding, “one day I am going to go back and free them.”
