Tuesday, September 5 2006 11:22 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Paris: Though the British and French have recognised and recorded her brave exploits for long, it took her native country India more than six decades to acknowledge the daredevil exploits of Allied spy Noor-un-Nisa Inayat Khan during the Second World War.

In a touching gesture, Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee now on official visit here, drove down to the ancestral home of the World War II daredevil spy in the suburbs to pay homage to the woman who was captured and later executed by the Germans.

"Noor-un-Nisa Inayat Khan was an extraordinary heroic woman who fought and gave her life for freedom and liberty," Mukherjee wrote in the visitors book yesterday after going round the two-storied house and a monument built in her memory in the courtyard.

This is the first time that India has officially acknowledged her as just three weeks back in Parliament, Mukherjee had said the Government had no (no) intention of honouring the brave spy with a posthumous award.

Noor Inayat was posthumously awarded a George Cross by the British and the Croix de Geurre award by the French. During the Resistance Day remembrance held every year in May, the French Government pays respects to her memory at a plaque placed outside the house in Rue de la Tulleries, about 30 kms outside Paris.