Taliban ransacked Indian Consulates buildings, took away parked vehicles, documents: Report

Photo Courtesy: Reuters

New Delhi: Afghanistan is going through a huge political crisis and the Taliban has taken over the country. The Taliban visited closed Indian consulates in Kandahar and Herat respectively two days ago, to conduct searches. According to sources in the security set-up, they also took some documents along with parked vehicles from the two missions. Notably, India has four Indian consulates located in Kandahar, Herat, Mazar-e-Sharif, and Jalalabad which were closed after the Taliban took control of Kabul on August 15.

“We expected this. They ransacked the place searched documents and also took away our parked vehicles from both embassies,” a senior officer told NDTV.

After reports of the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan surfaced Taliban’s takeover, India evacuated its Embassy personnel by an Indian Air Force C-17 aircraft on Tuesday, bringing back 120 Indians, including ITBP personnel from the Kabul airport.

The evacuation of remaining Indian workers was also discussed in the meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) wherein Prime Minister Narendra Modi was directed to take all necessary steps to bring them back.

“Modi, in the two back-to-back meetings of the CCS on August 17 and 18, instructed officials for speedy evacuation of Indians who are still in the war-torn country, in the next few days and also to provide all possible help to Afghan brothers and sisters who are looking towards India for assistance,” an official privy to this development had said.

The Taliban are currently hunting down people who worked for and collaborated with NATO and the US forces said a UN document. The confidential paper was produced by the Norwegian Centre for Global Analyses, which provides the UN with intelligence information.

“The Taliban are arresting and/or threatening to kill or arrest family members of target individuals unless they surrender themselves to the Taliban,” the BBC reported.