Indian engineer working with US Army in Afghanistan reaches hometown in Uttar Pradesh

PRAYAGRAJ: A 35-year old engineer from Pratapgarh district of Uttar Pradesh, who was working with the US Army in Afghanistan, has reached his hometown safely from the war-ravaged country.
Ashok Kumar Singh reached his home at Kunwar Ka Purva in Babuganj Bazar of Lalganj tehsil on Wednesday via Kuwait with the support of US Air Force.
Ashok spoke to TOI on phone and narrated the sorry state of affairs in the country which is now being controlled by the Taliban.
Ashok was working as an IT engineer at a US Army base camp in Kabul.
Ashok said, “Our base camp of 60 people was located about 8-10km from Pul-e-Charkhi, the biggest prison in Kabul. Among the people deployed in the camp, five were Indians, 35 Americans and 20 were British nationals. When the Taliban was about to reach Kabul on the night of August 14, two hours before that, we received a call from the US embassy asking us to vacate the camp."
"Before leaving the camp, we took the back-up of the entire data and destroyed around 200 laptops and 40-armed vehicles of the US Army. After this, six Chinook helicopters got us airlifted.
“We were than sent to Doha by a US Air Force plane on the night of August 15.
"After staying there for a day, we reached Kuwait and landed in Delhi on Tuesday night,” he said.
“It is not that Taliban is not being welcomed by the locals but at the same time, there is substantial population which wants to escape for better opportunities as their fate is very bleak in Afghanistan,” Ashok observed.