Kenya mall attack: Pregnant Indian RJ among victims

Ruhila Adatia-Sood, a popular media personality of Indian origin, was among the 69 people killed by the Islamist militants. Ruhila was in the rooftop car park of Westgate mall as part of a team hosting a cooking competition for small children at the time of the attack. She was married to Ketan Sood, who works for USAid in Nairobi, and was pregnant, media reports said. Ruhila was a presenter on Radio Africa media group’s East FM and hosted entertainment news on Kiss TV, E-News, Kiss 100 and X-FM. [caption id=“attachment_1129609” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Residents look at the ongoing rescue operation at the Westgate Shopping Centre in the capital of Nairobi. Reuters[/caption] On her Twitter account, Ruhila described herself as a “food lover, thrill seeker and a bungee jump away from sanity”. In a post on her blog, she confessed to her love for Indian food. She wrote, “It might have something to do with the fact that I am Indian….” Her radio presenter colleague, Kamal Kaur, was helping with the cooking competition and was at the event with her two young children when they all came under attack from a gunman. “Then he (the attacker) came out again with his big rifle. My daughter kept whispering to everybody, ‘Pretend you’re dead! He won’t shoot… pretend you’re dead’..” Kaur was quoted as saying by BBC. Kaur and her children managed to escape. “Ruhila was six months pregnant and she lost her life and we’re very devastated about that…” Another Indian man, pretending to be a Muslim, tried to escape when the attackers called out for Muslims to identify themselves and leave, British newspaper The Guardian a witness Joshua Hakim as saying. “An Indian man came forward and they asked, ‘What is the name of Muhammad’s mother?’ When he couldn’t answer, they just shot him,” Hakim said. PTI