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Tuesday, Jul 08, 2008
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Second Indian diplomat to face violent death

Special Correspondent and Agencies

Venkateswara Rao was considered an authority on the neighbouring countries

NEW DELHI/KABUL: V. Venkateswara Rao, the Indian diplomat killed in the Kabul suicide attack, had completed his posting and was slated to return to the country. In fact, Mr. Rao, Venkat to his friends, was in India and returned to Afghanistan only on Sunday, said diplomatic sources here.

He is the second Indian diplomat to die a violent death after Ravindra Mhatre, leaving his Foreign Office colleagues in shock. Mhatre was kidnapped by Kashmiri militants in the United Kingdom in 1984 and done to death.

Mr. Rao’s wife and two minor daughters, who were awaiting his return at the end of his two-year tenure, survive the 45-year-old First Secretary of the Indian Embassy in Kabul. His wife, Malathi Rao, left for Kabul in the Indian Air Force transport plane which left for Kabul on Monday evening.

Fluent in Dari, one of the main languages in Afghanistan, Mr. Rao was considered an authority on the neighbouring countries, especially Bhutan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan.

Military Attache Brig. Ravi Datt Mehta, 53, who was in the same car and was killed along with Mr. Rao, is the senior-most Army officer to die abroad.

Considered a bright and competent officer, he had served in counter-insurgency operations in Jammu and Kashmir and the Northeast. His wife Sunita, son Flt. Lt. Udit Mehta and daughter Bhavya survive Brig. Mehta. He joined the Indian mission just five months ago and his family was staying with him in Kabul.

Massive blast

Fires and black smoke obscured the scene after the early morning blast, which killed 40 people.

A burqa-clad woman screamed and charred bodies littered the flesh-strewn road outside the embassy after the powerful suicide car bomb ripped through the building’s outer walls.

“There are charred body parts everywhere,” the official said. “We are walking on rubble.”

Pictures taken immediately after the blast show blackened bodies, some naked after the force of the explosion tore off their clothes.

A badly wounded man is bent over a body, apparently of a child. Wounded people with blood-stained clothes fled the nightmarish scene, an AFP reporter said.

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