Mumbai: The story of Afghanistan’s Khatera Hashemi, who lives in New Delhi these days, sends shivers down the spine.
The former Afghan police officer was attacked on June 7, 2020, by a group of suspected Taliban fighters as she walked back home from her station after work. It was the third month of her job at the Criminal Investigation Department in Ghazni.
The fateful incident is still fresh in Khatera’s mind. “Two of them had guns. When they shot me, I got hit by a bullet in my back and my arm, but I was still standing,” Khatera told SBS Pashto and SBS Dateline.
“When a bullet hit me over my head, I was in shock and didn’t know what was happening, and I fell on the ground,” added Khatera, who was two months pregnant at the time.
The brutality of the Taliban fighters did not end there. She was stabbed in the eyes with a knife by her attackers.
Since November 2020, she has been living with her husband and toddler in Delhi for her treatment. While talking to News18 recently, Khatera said: “In the eyes of the Taliban, women are not living, breathing human beings, but merely some meat and flesh to be battered.”
She added that the Taliban first torture women and then discard their bodies.
“Sometimes our bodies are fed to dogs. I was lucky that I survived it. One has to live in Afghanistan under the Taliban to even imagine what hell has befallen the women, children and minorities there. In the eyes of the Taliban, women are not living, breathing human beings, but merely some meat and flesh to be battered,” she told News18.
“It’s tough for the world to imagine what we built in the past 20 years. We built dreams. Now they are gone. It’s all over for us. Women who work with the government or police were being hunted and threatened even before the Taliban had taken over the country. Now, the concern has gone beyond letting women work. At this point, I am scared if they would leave these women alive. They don’t just kill women. They make animals feed on their bodies. They are a blot on Islam,” she said.