A mum who was tortured by the Taliban when she was two months pregnant has stated that she fears for the future of women as the militant group reportedly would "feed them to the dogs".
33-year-old Khatera, speaking from Delhi, said that she had her eyes gouged out in a horrendous attack that had been planned by her very own dad, a former Taliban fighter.
In her anguished account of the ordeal, she told of how she was shot eight times in her upper body by the Taliban in Afghanistan's Ghazni province last year, reports The Mirror.
She said: "I was lucky I survived."
She described how she had been travelling home from work when she found herself surrounded by three Taliban fighters who, after checking her ID, began to shoot her.
“They first torture us and then discard our bodies to show as specimen of punishment," said Khatera, who also suffered deep knife injuries.
"Sometimes our bodies are fed to dogs. I was lucky that I survived it.
"One has to live in Afghanistan under the Taliban to even imagine what hell has befallen on the women, children and minorities there."
“In the eyes of Taliban, women are not living, breathing human beings, but merely some meat and flesh to be battered," she added.
Khatera is now living in Delhi with her toddler and husband, and worries what the future beholds for women in Afghanistan now the Taliban have taken control again.
Khatera said: “The Taliban don’t allow women to visit male doctors, and at the same time, don’t let women study and work. So, then what is left for a woman? Left to die?
"Now, the concern has gone beyond letting women work. At this point, I am scared if they would leave these women alive.
"They don’t just kill women. They make animals feed on their bodies."
The Taliban recently announced that they have "relaxed their stance" on women's rights.
But they have also signalled they want to ban women from employment and repurpose the law that women are required to be accompanied by a man.
The Taliban claim the group "does not want violence" and is looking for "a peaceful transfer of power”.
"Women were filling up universities. It was a beautiful sight to see girls going to schools. All went down the drain in just a week," Khatera said.
Khatera, who is mother to five children back at her Ghazni home, said that she was tortured "at a time when police had the power to act" and now the "Talibs will run amok."
She added: "Now my father will go after my children. Both my husband and I are not there with our children. They are at home with relatives.
"But my father will soon land there and may harm my children either physically or may induct them into the Taliban, encouraging them to take up arms and ruin their lives."
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