A pall of gloom has descended on the Baguiati house of Gopal Banerjee, the younger brother of Sushmita Banerjee who was allegedly gunned down by the Taliban in Kharana, capital of Afghanistan’s Paktika province. “We want to appeal to the government of India to make arrangements to bring didi’s body to Kolkata,” Mr Banerjee said.
Mr Banerjee and his wife Debolina have been shell-shocked by Sushmita’s brutal killing.
Many questions are bothering them. “The reports about her killing are sketchy. How come the Taliban spared other members of Jaanbaaz’s (her husband) family and only targeted her. How come, no one even tried to save didi?” asked Debolina.
Many have also raised the question as to why did she go back to Afghanistan from where she had escaped with great difficulty. After falling in love with Afghan national Jaanbaaz in Kolkata, Sushmita went to live with his family in 1988. After a seven-year stay she escaped and returned to India in 1995. Her memoirs were published as A Kabuliwala’s Bengali Wife in 1998, which became a runaway best-seller.
The book that depicted her life under the Taliban was later made into a film, Escape from Taliban, starring Manisha Koirala. So, it was after more than 17 years that she returned to Afghanistan in January 2013. Why? “We also persistently asked her this question. We even tried to dissuade her. We told her that you have exposed the Taliban in your book and they may try to take revenge. But didi had always been a daredevil who took her own decisions,” Mr Banerjee said.
Not just her family, even Swapan Biswas, the owner of her publisher Bhasa O .Sahitya is heartbroken. “She had said she was working on a novel on life in Afghanistan and it could have been published during the Kolkata Book Fair next year. But that novel has gone with her,” he added.