ON THE HOUR: Nid­han Singh Sachdeva -a de­vout Se­ha­jd­hari Sikh, who went all the way from Delhi to Gur­d­wara Thala Sahib in Afghanistan to do Kar Sewa -com­mu­nity ser­vice and was ab­ducted a few weeks ago, al­legedly by the Tal­iban, has re­turned to safety and has paid obei­sance at the Gur­d­wara soon af­ter his re­lease. 

“IWAS BEATEN BY MY CAP­TORS AND I AM GO­ING FOR A med­ical ex­am­i­na­tion,” said Nid­han Singh in a Face­book video post in the Dari -Farsi lan­guage. He fur­ther says, “I am thank­ful to the Gov­er­nor, the com­man­der and the se­cu­rity forces.”

Ra­dio Azadi of Ra­dio Free Eu­rope and Ra­dio Lib­erty group, has re­ported that the dis­trict gov­er­nor of Samakani -Ab­dul Rah­man Za­mati has told them that “uniden­ti­fied in­di­vid­u­als left Nadam Singh in the dis­trict to­day morn­ing.” The gov­er­nor also added that “he is in good health.”

Sig­nif­i­cantly, In­dia had through its diplo­matic chan­nels taken up the ab­duc­tion of Nid­han Singh with the Afghan gov­ern­ment.

Nidan Singh, an Afghan Sikh who was ab­ducted last month has in east­ern Afghanistan has been res­cued by the Afghan se­cu­rity forces.

I have seen his video state­ment in Dari stat­ing he was tor­tured by his cap­tors. He is now taken to a doc­tor for phys­i­cal ex­am­i­na­tion. pic.twit­ter.com/​9H­Pgv5sk6z

— TheAfghan­Dutch­Sikh (@The­Dutch­Sikh1) July 18, 2020

Afghan Sikh doc­u­men­tary maker based in Eng­land Prit­pal Singh con­firmed through a tweet that, Nidan Singh paid obei­sance at his­toric Thala Guru Nanak Gur­d­wara in Pak­tia Province, Afghanistan soon af­ter his re­lease from a month-long kid­nap­ping.

Video of Nidan Singh Sachdeva, prior to his ab­duc­tion from a Gur­d­wara in Afghanistan.

Ac­cord­ing to his fam­ily, he was ab­ducted by ‘armed men’ from the gur­d­wara on the night of 17th June 2020 and since then they are un­aware of his where­abouts. https://​t.co/​HY0CekNxmQ

— TheAfghan­Dutch­Sikh (@The­Dutch­Sikh1) July 15, 2020

WSN sources among the Sikhs in Afghanistan say, “we are pleased to note that In­dia has played a diplo­matic role in high­light­ing the case of Nid­han Singh and we are happy that he is back to safety amongst his peo­ple and fam­ily.”

“We also look for­ward with hope that In­dia will is­sue visas and fa­cil­i­tate the travel of those be­lea­guered Sikhs who de­sire to go to In­dia with­out de­lay as they are still fac­ing threats to their lives, said a fam­ily mem­ber of the 25 Sikhs killed four months ago.”