PESHAWAR: All that the Pakistani Taliban wanted was money and that's all they talked about, says Gurvinder Singh, one of the two Sikhs from Peshawar who were rescued after 40 days of captivity with the Pashtun-speaking terrorists. The Taliban beheaded the third abducted Sikh trader last month because their ransom demand wasn't met.
Gurvinder's story blows the myth the Pakistani Taliban has built around itself as a band of fighters for Islam.
"All the bandits wanted was money. They were not religious men. We did not see any one of them offering prayers even once," he said at his home in Peshawar's Mohallah Jagan Shah. The area near Khyber Pass, from where they were rescued, is under the influence of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan commanders Nazir Afridi, Adnan Afridi and Tariq Afridi.
While Surjeet Singh was rescued on Monday along with Gurvinder and they were reunited with their families in Peshawar, Jaspal Singh was beheaded after the families failed to raise the ransom of 30 million Pakistani rupees within the deadline. Jaspal's decapitated body was found on February 21.
"We were shackled and chained for 40 days, given only rotis and tea and kicked and beaten black and blue," Gurvinder told TOI. The 17-year-old described for the first time the horror that the three faced at the hands of their captors.
Belonging to the 3,000-strong Sikh community of Peshawar, mostly petty traders and business families, the three set out on January 19 to sell merchandise in some small towns nestled in the Tirah Valley near the Khyber Pass, that is the doorway to Central Asia from Pakistan. They had traversed these badlands before and Pashtun terrorists had always let them be. But not this time.
http://newageislam.com/all-the-taliban-wanted-was-money--rescued-sikh/islamic-world-news/d/2544
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2:47 AM
Moderate Islamist here
