'Kabul Guest House Attack Meant to Create Fear in Minds of Indians': Indian Ambassador Amar Sinha to NDTV
Indian Ambassador Amar Sinha has said. "The idea is to scare the Indians. I have spoken to them. They are not going away that easily," said Mr Sinha, in an exclusive interview to NDTV at the India House in Kabul.
Ambassador Sinha told NDTV after visiting Park Palace, the guest house favoured by foreigners, that became the scene of a door-to-door killing spree modelled on the 26/11 Mumbai Attacks, that soft Indian targets had been chosen deliberately.
"We had very credible intelligence and issued an advisory just a week ago. We knew since the Embassy security has been hardened sufficiently and it is very difficult to reach, that people were looking for softer targets where Indians worked or lived," Ambassador Sinha said. He added that the Kandahar consulate had been locked-down on Friday, after Afghan authorities had alerted of another threat.
Mr Sinha also brushed off talk of the likelihood of his presence at a classical music event at the guest house at the time of the attack, and that he is thought to have been a primary target. "It's not about me. It's about India that is targeted every single day and not by Afghans,"
fter a visit to the guest house, Ambassador Sinha focused on how Indians were targeted. "This is what makes me believe that this was targeted. Most of the Indians who were there were killed in their rooms. They were killed in cold blood, at point blank range, while many of the others, the foreigners who were killed, died in the restaurant. There is a distinction," he explained.