MUMBAI, 28 May 2008 — Joy, smiles and cheers returned to the faces of the Sarang family after Naeem Mohammed Sarang, the 45-year-old electrical engineer abducted in Afghanistan, returned home in Mumbai on Monday evening.
Sarang was kidnapped along with his Nepalese colleague, Gurung Karana Bahadur, on April 21 while they were traveling in a taxi on the main highway in Adraskan, near Herat. Sarang and Bahadur were rescued by Afghan security forces. “I pray to Allah that even my enemy doesn’t go through the agony and trauma that I experienced in captivity. It was living hell,” Sarang said.
The engineer said that in the first few days after his release, he had had nightmares of being dragged in shackles through dark jungles surrounded by wild dogs and snakes.
Narrating his abduction, Sarang said four people with their faces covered stopped their vehicle at gunpoint, handcuffed them and dumped them in the boot of the car. “We were made to walk in the jungle in chains and were frequently threatened with execution if we failed to cooperate with them. We hardly got anything to eat and slept on rocks,” he said.
Asked whether he could find out the reason for his abduction, Sarang said: “They never spoke in front of me because they knew I speak Persian well. If they wanted to discuss anything, they would go out.”
Sarang and Bahadur were freed May 18. The men were contracted to provide logistics to Afghan police training camps.
Taleban militants, who are active in the area and often blamed for such abductions, never claimed responsibility.
