This news comes as a shock to me because I had never heard that Indian soldiers were being involved in Afghanistan. But last week, the Hindustan Times reported that two Indian soldiers were killed in a suicide bomb attack in Razai village, in the southwest province of Nimroz.

In the first-ever suicide attack on Indian nationals in Afghanistan, two Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) men were killed and five others wounded in Razai village, in the southwest province of Nimroz, on Thursday.

The suicide bomber struck minutes after an Afghan police convoy was hit by a motorcycle bomb on the 218-km Zaranj-Delaram road being constructed by the ITBP, officials said. At least six Afghan police personnel were killed.

National Review reporter Jonathan Foreman writes that the involvement of Indian soldiers in Afghanistan has gone unreported in the West and "perhaps some of the journalists in Kabul need to get out of town more."

In fact there are at least 1,000 Indian paramilitary soldiers of the 'Indo-Tibetan Border Police' and the 'Border Roads Organization' - an adjunct to the Indian military similar to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers -- operating in Afghanistan.

These forces are not part of NATO/ISAF and have little or no contact with NATO or U.S. commands. Their official mission is the protection of Indian construction teams and businesses, India being one of the larger aid donors and investors in Afghanistan, up there with Iran. Two Indian contractors have been abducted and beheaded by militants in the last two years.

There were some references in 2001 about India's assistance in anti-Taliban coalition. But their current involvement was definitely not known to most people.

(http://www.sajaforum.org/2008/01/media-indian-so.html)