The Hindu : National : Not lucky this time

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, May 01, 2006

National

National

Not lucky this time

M. Srinivas

HYDERABAD : Death came hunting for Kasula Suryanarayana, the engineer who was killed by the Taliban on Sunday.

Forty-one-year-old Suryanarayana of East Anandbagh had a close shave with death just a month ago in a blast triggered by the extremist outfit on the borders of Afghanistan and Pakistan. He came to the city for a holiday in March-end. Shaken by that incident, Mr. Suryanarayana had, in fact, made up his mind to leave Afghanistan after completing the current assignment.

"He had a miraculous escape while he was on the way to his flat after inspecting the site then," his brother-in-law Krishna recalled Mr. Suryanarayana narrating to him the chilling episode.

Planning to quit

According to Mr. Suryanarayana's neighbour, B. Rajagopal Singh, the engineer was planning to quit the Bahrain-based Al-Moayed keeping in view the threat perception to Indian workers from the Taliban.

"We came to know that Suryanarayana has not been taking his salary for the last two months," Mr. Rajagopal, an ex-servicemen and retired bank employee, said.

Mr. Suryanarayana had finished stints in the Maldives and Sri Lanka and even made a vain bid to get an Australian visa before going to Afghanistan four months ago.

An agitated Mr. Krishna squarely blamed Roshan company, the Afghan mobile service provider, which gave sub-contract to Bahrain-based Al-Moayed telecom company, for Mr. Suryanarayana's kidnapping.

"Officials of Roshan company have been misleading us since Friday while giving information about the kidnap episode," he said.

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