India should immediately release four Pakistani prisoners of war who have been in its custody since 1965.
MUZAFFARABAD: India should immediately release four Pakistani prisoners of war who have been in its custody since 1965. Their names are Alam Sher, resident of Tai village in Poonch district. He was a soldier in the Azad Kashmir Battalion, which is now called the Azad Kashmir Regiment. He and his three companions, Barkat Hussain, Sakhi Mohammad and Bagga Khan, went missing in action and were later reported as killed in fighting. In 2006, one of Alam Sher’s relatives was informed by a former militant, who had spent time in an Indian prison, that he had met some Pakistani soldiers including Alam Sher.
Eventually, a well-known lawyer in India filed a petition in an Indian court and it came to light that these four Pakistani POWs have been languishing in Jammu jail since 1965. These details were issued by the jail authorities but the Indian government later denied the presence of any Pakistani POW in any Indian jail.
Can the Indian government or the Supreme Court of India please sort out this very urgent issue?
Mazhar Iqbal
Published in The Express Tribune, October 22nd, 2012.
