After 18 months in ISIS captivity, Andhra doctor rescued in Libya

Sushma Swaraj took to Twitter and said Dr Ramamurthy Kosanam had suffered a bullet injury.

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An Andhra doctor who had been kidnapped by Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) terrorists in Libya nearly a year and half ago, has been rescued and will be brought back to India shortly.

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj took to Twitter on Tuesday and said that Dr Ramamurthy Kosanam, a resident of Krishna district of Andhra Pradesh, had suffered a bullet injury.

“We have rescued Dr Ramamurthy Kosanam in Libya. Dr Kosanam has suffered a bullet injury . We are bringing him to India shortly. With this, we have rescued all the six Indians abducted there. I appreciate the good work done by our mission there," Swaraj tweeted.

Dr Ramamurthy had been working as a physician in Lbn-e-Sina Hospital for more than 15 years at Sirte in Libya.

In September 2015, a group of IS terrorists abducted Dr Ramamurthy along with a bio-chemical engineer, Samal Pravash Ranjan of Odisha from the hospital and seven other Filipino nurses from their residential quarters.

However, Pravash Rajan managed to escape from captivity.

Earlier the family told The Hindu that Dr Rammurthy had been trying to return to India before he was abducted because of the war, but the Libyan government allegedly refused to send him back.

Last year, two Telugu professors, who were in the captivity of an Islamic State-affiliated group in Libya were rescued and brought back to India.

On July 2015, T Gopikrishna a native of Tekkali in Andhra Pradesh and C Balaram Kishan from Hyderabad, Telangana who were professors at Sirte University in Libya, were abducted by Islamic State militants when they were on their way to Tripoli to board a flight to India.