New Delhi, May 12: The foreign office today sighed in relief as an Indian taken hostage in Nigeria walked home unharmed after 18 hours in captivity.

Maman Varkey, who works for Italian oil company Saipam, was kidnapped yesterday with two Italian colleagues 30 km from his home in the city of Port Harcourt. They were on their way to work.

With the kidnapping evoking memories of the recent abduction and murder of telecom engineer K. Suryanarayana in Afghanistan, the foreign ministry acted fast. It rushed two senior officials, including the military attach?, from the Indian chancery in Lagos to Port Harcourt.

The head of the chancery, Raj Kumar, told The Telegraph he had received an email from the president of the Indian Cultural Association in Port Harcourt, Manish Malhotra, confirming that Varkey had just been freed. The association had worked together with the chancery officials to secure the release.

Officials here said they still didn’t know why Varkey was kidnapped or who his captors were. A preliminary report from Nigeria suggests it was a local issue that had nothing to do specifically with Indians.

Port Harcourt has a history of attacks on the oil industry. There have been a series of kidnappings and murderous assaults by Nigerian militants who have demanded a greater share of oil profits.

Malhotra’s email says Varkey was not harmed by his captors. The two chancery officials will file a detailed report on the events leading to the kidnapping.

The foreign ministry endured several nerve-tingling hours yesterday with its officials in Nigeria clueless about Varkey.

The Indian high commissioner in Abuja, Harihara Subramaniam Vishwanatham, got in touch with the Nigerian foreign and interior ministries while the two-member team met the hostage’s wife and children in Port Harcourt.

Delhi informed Varkey’s relatives in India but kept their identity under wraps.

A foreign ministry spokesperson explained that recent experience suggests publicity can hamper negotiations and cause trauma to family members. The reference was to the kidnapping of Suryanarayana by the Taliban.

India had formulated a hostage policy after the hijack of an Indian Airlines plane to Kandahar in December 1999. The policy lays down the ground rules for not succumbing to pressure from hostage-takers.