Indian author Sushmita Banerjee, 49, was shot dead by unidentified gunmen who are suspected to be Taliban militants, police said.

The woman author who was living in Afghanistan and married to an Afghan businessman was killed outside her home in Paktika province, in the southeastern part of the country, late Wednesday night.

Police officials told CNN that Taliban militants broke into her house on Wednesday night and tied up her Afghan husband, local businessman Jaanbaz Khan, before taking her out and shooting her. Police said militants dumped her body near a religious school.

"We found her bullet-riddled body near a madrassa on the outskirts of Sharan city this morning," provincial police chief Dawlat Khan Zadran said, confirming earlier reports from Indian media. She had been shot 20 times and some of her hair had been ripped off by the militants,he said.

The author's best-selling memoir about her escape from the Taliban in the 1990s was made into a movie in 2003. Police suggested the book, Kabuliwala's Bengali Wife, may have been the reason the militants went after her.