'Surya's decision to go out alone a mystery'

New Delhi: Indian telecom engineer K Suryanarayana's decision to venture out without security in the southern Afghan hinterland could be the reason behind his kidnapping and subsequent killing by Taliban militia, his employer said here on Monday.

"Though I do not wish to blame him. But why Surya decided to travel alone only with a driver is still a mystery to all of us," said V P Ajan, President, al-Moayed company, which employed the Indian engineer.

"When you stay in a troubled area for a long time, you tend to develop a false sense of confidence about the security of that area. This might have happened to him," he said.

Suryanarana was the in-charge of mobile telecom company al-Moayed's operations in Ghazni.

"It depended on him to increase or decrease his own security," Ajan said.

Asserting that the security arrangements made for the al-Moayed group employees are sufficient in Afghanistan, he said generally the employees move around in convoys with security guards.

"Even a week before the incident, there was a security alert in Ghazni and promptly the work was stopped there. There has never been any compromise on security," he said.

"Even machine guns are being given to some employees in the high risk zones for self-protection," he said.

Saladin Group, the largest private security group in Afghanistan, which operates with all modern equipments, has been employed to provide security to the employees, he said.

Suryanarayana was held up at gun point at 1900 hrs (IST) on Friday as he was driving on the Kandahar-Kabul highway in the Hassan Kariez district of southern Zabul province.

Though Bahrain-based al-Moayed does not have any plans to review or overhaul the security arrangements in Afghanistan for its employees, there will be close monitoring of the security situation of its employees.

"We are going to check the security situation of our employees more closely to ensure that they are safe," Manish Aggarwal, General Manager, al-Moayed said.

Al-Moayed, which is working in many infrastructure development projects in Afghanistan has around 90 full-time employees working in different parts of the country.