2013: Sushmita Banerjee, Escape from the Taliban author
September 4th, 2019 Headsman
On the night of September 4-5, 2013, Afghan author Sushmita Banerjee was kidnapped and summarily executed by the Taliban.
Born Hindu to a Bengali Brahmin family in Kolkata, India, Banerjee secretly married a Muslim businessman named Janbaz Khan and moved with him to Afghanistan, converting to Islam in the process.
She ran a women’s clinic there until goons from the rising Taliban movement beat her up and held her prisoner in 1995. In danger of being executed by her captors, she managed to escape and return to Kolkata.
She made her mark publishing a memoir of her harrowing experience. Kababuliwalar Bangali Bou (A Kabuliwala’s Bengali Wife) was the nondescript title; Bollywood punched it up for the silver screen as Escape from the Taliban.
This was Banerjee’s claim to fame or — Taliban perspective — infamy, and it’s possible it was the eventual cause of her murder.
“She had no fear,” a sister remembered of her. Fearlessly, or even recklessly, she returned to Afghanistan in 2013 — daring even to live in the militant-dominated border province of Paktika and refusing to wear the burka.
A Taliban splinter group disavowed by the Taliban itself ultimately claimed responsibility for kidnapping Banerjee on the night of September 4, 2013 and depositing her bullet-riddled body to be discovered the following morning; their charge was that Banerjee was an “Indian spy”.
On this day..
- 1574: Charles de Mornay, sword dance regicide - 2020
- 1799: Ettore Carafa - 2018
- 1964: James Coburn, George Wallace's first death warrant - 2017
- 1821: Jose Miguel Carrera, Chilean patriot - 2016
- 1946: Leon Rupnik, Erwin Rosener, and Lovro Hacin, for the occupation of Slovenia - 2015
- 1822: Francisco Javier de Elio - 2014
- 1951: King Abdullah's assassins - 2013
- 1778: Patrick McMullen, repeat deserter - 2012
- 1953: Miss Earle Dennison, the first white woman electrocuted in Alabama - 2011
- 1896: Chief Chingaira Makoni, Rhodesian rebel - 2010
- 1942: Bishop Gorazd of Prague - 2009
- 1638: Three (of four) English colonists for murdering a Native American - 2008
Entry Filed under: 21st Century,Afghanistan,Artists,Arts and Literature,Borderline "Executions",Disfavored Minorities,Execution,No Formal Charge,Racial and Ethnic Minorities,Ripped from the Headlines,Shot,Summary Executions,Wartime Executions,Women
Tags: 2010s, 2013, afghan war, september 4, sushmita banerjee, taliban
