Rajasthan Man Among 3 Indians Kidnapped By Al Qaeda-Linked Group In Mali

NDTV

14-07-2025

Jaipur:
Three Indian nationals, including a resident of Rajasthan, a man from Telangana, and an engineer from Odisha, were kidnapped on July 1 in the West African nation of Mali. The kidnappings took place during an armed assault by suspected terrorists affiliated with Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimeen (JNIM), a group linked to Al-Qaeda. The incident occurred at the Diamond Cement Factory, located in the Kayes region of western Mali.
As of today, there has been no public claim of responsibility by the group, but the attack has been linked to recent operations carried out by JNIM. The group has previously targeted foreign workers, government installations, and military outposts across Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso.
One of the victims has been identified as Prakash Chand Joshi, a native of Jaipur. Another is Amaralingeswara Rao, a 45-year-old resident of Miryalaguda, Telangana, who had been working in Mali since 2015. The third is P Venkataraman, 28, from Odisha's Ganjam district, employed with Mumbai-based Blue Star Pvt Ltd. He had been stationed at the Diamond Cement facility for about six months.
The Indian Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) has confirmed the identities of the kidnapped individuals and stated that it is in regular contact with the Malian authorities, local law enforcement, and the families involved.
Speaking from Jaipur, Suman Joshi, wife of Prakash Chand Joshi, told said that her husband was taken "forcibly by armed men" from the premises of the cement factory. There has been no direct contact with him since the kidnapping, she said. The family has reached out to the Ministry of External Affairs for assistance and has appealed to the Indian government to secure his release at the earliest.
In Miryalaguda, Amaralingeswara Rao's wife Venkataramana said she was informed of the kidnapping by the company he worked for. "I last spoke to him on the night of June 30. Since then, there has been no contact. We've received no official update from the government so far," she told news agency PTI. The couple has three children, and the family has appealed publicly for intervention.
In Odisha, P Narasamma, mother of Venkataraman, said she received a call from a company official on July 4 informing her that her son was "in police custody," only to later hear unconfirmed reports that he may have been abducted. "First they said he is in custody, now we hear he is in captivity," she said, visibly distressed.
The Diamond Cement Factory, where the kidnapping took place, is operated by the Prasaditya Group, an Indian business conglomerate with commercial interests in several African nations. It employs foreign technical staff, including Indian nationals. The company has not issued any public statement as of July 14.
The Sahel region, which includes Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso, has seen a steady escalation of violence since 2012, when insurgencies began to spread from northern Mali. The conflict has been fuelled by political instability, the rise of militant Islamist groups, and weak state presence in rural areas. The Global Terrorism Index (GTI) earlier this year described the region as the current epicentre of global terrorism, accounting for more than half of all terrorism-related deaths globally.
According to government data, approximately 400 Indian nationals currently live and work in Mali, many of them in the construction, mining, and infrastructure sectors. The Indian embassy in Bamako, the Malian capital, has been in "close and constant touch" with local authorities and law enforcement since the incident.