Exiled Bangladesh author remains in hiding in India

NEW DELHI, Saturday (AFP) - Controversial Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen remained in hiding in India on Saturday fearing reprisals from hardline Muslims who see her work as blasphemous, officials said. The author was driven to the Indian capital New Delhi late on Friday under police escort and housed under tight security at an official residence, Indian media said, but authorities declined to confirm her location.

Federal cabinet ministers attended a meeting late on Friday to review security for the 45-year-old author who has said her fugitive existence had pushed her to the brink of emotional breakdown.“Keeping her (Taslima) safe is the most important task at hand in this case,” said foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee.

The cabinet “discussed issues related to security for Nasreen's stay in India in view of the threats issued by some fundamentalist Muslim organisations,” a senior official, who asked to remain unnamed, told AFP. Riots by thousands of Muslims in Kolkata calling for the writer's expulsion from the country led to Nasreen being rushed out the eastern city late on Thursday. The Times of India said Kolkata police had informed Nasreen she was in imminent danger of an attack by Muslim extremists and moved her from the capital of the Marxist-ruled state of West Bengal.

Police in Kolkata put her on a flight to Jaipur in western India, but the local Rajasthan state government there told her to leave at dawn on Friday because of what it said were “security reasons.”The doctor-turned-author said on Friday the events had put a huge strain her.

“I am mentally distressed. I am not well at all,” Nasreen told the Press Trust of India. “I am not in a position to talk. I am shattered.””I have no place to go. India is my home, and I would like to keep living in this country till I die,” she said. Nasreen fled her Muslim-majority homeland of Bangladesh in 1994 after huge street protests by demonstrators who decried her writings as blasphemous and demanded her “execution.”Kolkata was calm on Saturday after soldiers were called out earlier in the week to control thousands of protesters who demanded Nasreen's expulsion from India for allegedly insulting Prophet Mohammad.