4 Bengal natives who cooked for US forces return to state

kolkata: Four youths who worked with a catering company and used to cook food for US forces managed to return to their native places in North 24-Parganas from Kabul on Monday night, bringing a sigh of relief to their family members.

Three youths returned to their houses at Gopalnagar area of Bongaon while another was from Ashokenagar

area. Though they were secured as they were under the

protection of the US army,

the sounds of firing and fighter jets triggered fear in them.

Bidyut Biswas and Palash Sarkar are from Sankarpur village while Prabir Sarkar is from Raghunathpur under Gopalnagar. They said that at one point of time they thought that they would not be able to return home.

"Talibans had given an ultimatum that all foreign nationals would have to leave Afghanistan by August 31. We were not so hopeful that we would be back home. As we said we would leave, our company told us that they would hike our salary. We were told that around 5,000 $ would be given to us for 15 days. But we decided to return home. We have turned jobless. We would have been killed there," said Biswas. All of them returned to India via Qatar. Ajay Majumdar, another youth and a resident of Ashokenagar in North 24-Parganas went to Afghanistan around five months ago. He also worked in the army camp."Last one week tension mounted up as we always heard sounds of firing outside. We were safe as we were at army camp. As the situation was deteriorating fast, we did not have he courage to stay back.

Our parents were under fear as well. They were hopeful as attempts were made to bring the Indian nationals back home," Majumdar said.He further added: "We had faced difficulties in the last few days before returning. Local Afghan youths do not like Talibans as they unleash terror and atrocities. People were safe as US forces were there for a long time but everything changed since August 15."