As soon as I saw the news on TV, I thought of my sister (Sushmita Banerjee, who was killed in Afghanistan in September 2013).

Whoever will speak or work on women’s issues in Afghanistan must be very careful. There are people there who would always be on the lookout to harm them.

We just switched off the TV after a while as memories of my sister’s murder came flooding back. At the time of our tragedy, both the central and state governments had kept in touch with us with regular updates. I hope Judith’s family gets the same assistance from the government in this difficult time.

— Gopal Banerjee, a real estate businessman in Baguiati, is the younger brother of Calcutta girl Sushmita Banerjee, who had met and married Jaanbaz Khan in Calcutta and later went to live in Afghanistan with him. She penned the memoir Kabuliwalar Bangali Bou, based on which the Bollywood film Escape from Taliban was made in 2003. She was killed by suspected Taliban militants in Paktika province of Afghanistan in September 2013.

I learnt this morning about Judith D’Souza from Calcutta having been kidnapped in Kabul from the Taimani area. I have heard from my UN friends that kidnappings have become a major issue in post-NATO Kabul, especially in the Taimani area.
I actually stayed quite close to Taimani. I have memories flooding back of a conversation I had in the UN offices in Delhi last year about a Calcutta girl working in Kabul. I hope that she will be released unharmed as the Indian embassy in Kabul has personnel capable of handling such a crisis, and there is a lot of goodwill towards Indians In Afghanistan.

My first introduction to the narrative of kidnapping in Kabul came from my Afghan colleagues who told me repeatedly not to stand outside the ministry gates and wait for my car as the rumour was that the ISI had put a bounty of $100,000 on every Indian’s head in Afghanistan!

Over time in Kabul one learns the dos and don’ts. The key ones are — never follow the same road to your office; never be flashy in terms of your attire, your mobile; always be on good terms with your driver, he can be the difference between life and death; never sleep in your car (I slept in a moving vehicle for less than a minute in my two years there); know your neighbourhood like the back of your hand; be able to locate the neighbourhood spy (in our case the neighbourhood cobbler was really not a cobbler!); never get into an argument with Afghans; always avoid places where foreigners congregate.
These are few of the things that I did — though not all the time —  to avoid being kidnapped. Unfortunately in the case of Judith this has not worked. Hopefully she will be released soon, and Inshallah everything will be okay.        

Joy Dasgupta, was an adviser with the ministry of agriculture in Kabul from December 2010 to December 2012 

This is one of our worst fears coming true. Judith’s abduction is extremely unfortunate and I hope she returns safe and unharmed.

I visited Kabul — for durations varying between two weeks and two months — every year from 2006 to 2013 as a consultant to various NGOs working in Afghanistan. I haven’t been there since, so I don’t know what the situation is right now. But there was always an element of risk and it has progressively worsened.

Most NGOs have clear security protocols. We always had a 24-hour security focal point and unarmed guards at every facility. We had caller IDs for phones and radio IDs. Everyone had a code that we had to use instead of our names. If we wanted to go out we had to requisition a car that would take us only after a security clearance.

None of the NGOs has any armed guard as that can send out a wrong signal. For us, security was more about prevention and precaution. We were advised not to post our activities and movement on social media too much. We were advised against stepping out during curfew hours (normally 8pm to 7am), walking down streets, visiting markets or hailing cabs. But most of us flouted the rules because we couldn’t stay cooped up all the time.

On most of my visits I have stayed in the area from where Judith was reportedly kidnapped. It is where many of the international NGOs are located. Aga Khan Foundation, with which Judith is associated, is a respected and renowned organisation.

When you are in a setting like Kabul, your guard is always up. We keep getting generic security updates from various sources, government and our offices. But generic security advisories are rarely too specific.

The skill and strength of aid workers, like Judith, lie in their overriding that risk perception and doing their jobs. It is often a matter of luck and there can be an accident despite one’s best efforts to be safe.  But if you are targeted there is no chance of you doing anything, especially since we in the NGO sector don’t have any retaliatory option.
I pray for Judith and her family’s well-being. And we must hope and believe that she will be back home — healthy, safe and soon…

Tanaji Sen, an aid worker who visited Kabul as a consultant several times between 2006 and 2013