Around 150 Indian citizens picked up by the Taliban this morning have been released and are now inside Kabul airport, sources have told NDTV, adding that they will be airlifted out of war-torn Afghanistan soon.
Indian citizens waiting outside Kabul airport for evacuation flights were taken to a nearby police station for questioning and checking of travel documents, a top government source said, amid worrying reports from local media that they had been abducted.
This comes hours after an Indian Air Force transport aircraft managed to evacuate around 85 Indians from Kabul; the plane has landed safely in Dushanbe in Tajikistan.
Sources this morning had said that the government is trying to bring as many Indians as possible into the airport at Kabul to keep them safe while it works out the evacuation logistics.
India has evacuated all embassy staff but an estimated 1,000 citizens remain in several cities in the war-torn country, and ascertaining their location and condition is proving to be a challenge, a Home Ministry official had said, since not all of them registered themselves with the embassy.
Among those are around 200 Sikhs and Hindus who have taken refuge at a gurudwara in Kabul.
Late Wednesday a spokesperson for the Taliban - which has been trying to project a more moderate image - released a video statement of the gurudwara head saying he had been assured of their safety.