Indian Ambassador to Afghanistan Amar Sinha (right) speaking to NDTV at the India House in Kabul.
The seven-hour long siege at a Kabul guest house on Wednesday that killed four Indians and ten others will not scare New Delhi away from Afghanistan, Indian Ambassador Amar Sinha has said. "The idea is to scare the Indians. I have spoken to them. They are not going away that easily," said Mr Sinha, in an exclusive interview to NDTV at the India House in Kabul.
Ambassador Sinha told NDTV after visiting Park Palace, the guest house favoured by foreigners, that became the scene of a door-to-door killing spree modelled on the 26/11 Mumbai Attacks, that soft Indian targets had been chosen deliberately.
"We had very credible intelligence and issued an advisory just a week ago. We knew since the Embassy security has been hardened sufficiently and it is very difficult to reach, that people were looking for softer targets where Indians worked or lived," Ambassador Sinha said. He added that the Kandahar consulate had been locked-down on Friday, after Afghan authorities had alerted of another threat.
Mr Sinha also brushed off talk of the likelihood of his presence at a classical music event at the guest house at the time of the attack, and that he is thought to have been a primary target. "It's not about me. It's about India that is targeted every single day and not by Afghans," he told NDTV.
After a visit to the guest house, Ambassador Sinha focused on how Indians were targeted. "This is what makes me believe that this was targeted. Most of the Indians who were there were killed in their rooms. They were killed in cold blood, at point blank range, while many of the others, the foreigners who were killed, died in the restaurant. There is a distinction," he explained.
Investigations are looking at how the attackers got inside the UN-certified guest house, which has several security layers. The probe is looking at the possibility of inside links to the attack as well as whether any of the guests were involved.
Four Indian civilians were murdered in the guest House. They were Dr Martha Farrell, who worked with the Aga Khan Foundation in Afghanistan and was director of PRIA, an international centre for learning and promotion of citizen participation and democratic governance, George Mathew from Ernakulam, a private auditor along with colleague RK Bhatti from Chandigarh, and Dr Satish Chandra, a private consultant and international technical consultant with the United Nations Development Project (UNDP).
Apart from the four Indians, two Pakistanis, one American, one Italian, one Kazakhstani, four Afghans and one dual Afghan-British citizen were killed in Kabul in the attack, which was claimed by the Taliban.