Nairobi siege: Indian shot for failing to answer query on Islam

An Indian man was shot when he failed to answer a question on Islam asked by Somalian militants who were holding hostages after killing scores of people at an upmarket mall in Nairobi. Reports said the heavily armed gunmen belonging to Al Qaeda-linked Somali militant group Al Shabaab were trying to weed out non-Muslims for execution by interrogating people on their faith or asking them to recite the ‘Shahada’.

On the second floor of Westgate, Nairobi’s swankiest shopping mall, Joshua Hakim saw gunmen, some of whom looked to be teenagers, strapped with ammunition belts, carrying AK-47 assault rifles. ‘They were firing indiscriminately, they shot a lot of people,’ he said. During a lull in the firing, the attackers called out for Muslims to identify themselves and leave, British newspaper The Guardian quoted Hakim as saying.

Covering his Christian name on his ID with his thumb, Hakim approached one of the attackers and showed them the plastic card. ‘They told me to go. Then an Indian man came forward and they said, ‘What is the name of Muhammad’s mother?’ When he couldn’t answer they just shot him.’ 

Ruhila Adatia-Sood, a popular media personality of Indian-origin, was among those killed at the mall in Nairobi. Ruhila was in the rooftop car park of Westgate mall as part of a team hosting a cooking competition for small children at the time of the attack. She was married to Ketan Sood, who works for USAid in Nairobi, and was pregnant, media reports said.

Ruhila was a presenter on Radio Africa media group’s East FM and hosted entertainment news on Kiss TV, E-News, Kiss 100 and X-FM. On her Twitter account, Ruhila described herself as a ‘food lover, thrill seeker and a bungee jump away from sanity.’ In a post on her blog, she confessed to her love for Indian food. She wrote, ‘It might have something to do with the fact that I am Indian....’ 

Her radio presenter colleague, Kamal Kaur, was helping with the cooking competition and was at the event with her two young children when they all came under attack from a gunman. ‘A grenade was thrown at us and it went off. At the same time he shot at us. The bullet missed my son by just an inch; it bounced off the wall and hit the boy who was next to him,’ Kaur was quoted by BBC.

Kaur and her children managed to escape though her kids  were hit by shrapnel in their legs. ‘My daughter is very devastated because my colleague Ruhila...she was six months pregnant and she lost her life and we’re very devastated about tha,’ Kaur added. Nehal Vekaria, a 16-year-old Kenyan of Indian-origin, was also killed in the attack.