Kidnapped Indian oil worker escapes in Sudan

June 6, 2008 (KHARTOUM) — An Indian oil worker escaped from his Sudanese kidnappers and was rescued after three days walking through open scrubland, his employer said on Thursday.

Sudanese rescue teams are using helicopters to search for another Indian man who escaped at the same time. Two more Indians and their Sudanese driver are thought to be still in captivity, said Mohamed Arif Khan, head of Petro Energy Contracting Services.

“We are all very worried, particularly for the second man who escaped,” Khan told Reuters.

The four Indians and their driver were seized in mid-May between the Neem and Heglig oil fields in South Kordofan, a region that borders Darfur, diplomatic sources said at the time.

Khan said the escaped worker had told him the captors appeared to be disaffected locals.

“They are involved in a local dispute…They are not a political group. They are not an organised group.”

The two men, both in their 30s, escaped on Saturday night.

One of them decided to go into a forest to look for water and did not return, said Khan, chief executive of the Indian-Sudanese company that has worked in South Kordofan for eight years.

The second man, from Mumbai, spent three days walking though the remote area before a passing security patrol found him on the side of a road on Wednesday, Khan said.

“He ate fruit and drank water from a river. He was in a very good condition. Nothing fearful was done to him. He just told me that he was very tired and wanted to sleep,” said Khan.

India’s ambassador Deepak Vohra told Reuters the four had been doing contract work for the Greater Nile Petroleum Operation Company, a consortium led by China’s CNPC, India’s ONGC, Malaysia’s Petronas and Sudan’s state-owned Sudapet.

(Reuters)