According to local authorities in eastern Paktika province of Afghanistan, Taliban militants shot dead an Indian author whose memoir about her dramatic escape from the Taliban became a Bollywood movie.

Provincial police chief for Paktika province, Dawlat Khan Zadran confirming the report said Sushmita Banerjee was shot dead by militants outside her house in Paktika province.

Mr. Zadran further added that the author was taken away by the Taliban militants after they broke into her house and blinded folded and tied her husband.

He said the dead body of Sushmita Banerjee was found in Sharana city outside a madrasa. “Around 20 bullet holes were seen in her body,” the provincial police chief Dawlat Zadran said.

The author became famous with her 1995 book, “A Kabuliwala’s Bengali Wife.” She was married to Afghan businessman, Jaanbaz Khan, wrote about her life in Afghanistan and how she had fled from the Taliban’s oppressive rule.

Having moved to Afghanistan in 1989 after meeting and marrying her husband in Kolkata, she found life was tolerable until a 1993 crackdown. She refused to convert to Islam, something that angered the Taliban.

Banerjee, 49, had recently moved to Paktika province to live with her husband, and was a health worker who helped women in an area that had very few female health professionals, police said.