Forgotten prisoners

Spare a thought for all those forgotten Pakistanis who are languishing in India’s Amritsar prison. There are thought to be at least 30 Pakistani inmates in the central prison but a majority of them can’t seem to prove their citizenship at all due to one reason or the other. Out of these only four have been confirmed as Pakistanis by the country’s diplomatic mission. Yet that has not brought them any closer to freedom. Neither has the Indian government shown any leniency towards them.

Consider the fate of a 30-year-old youth who has a severe speech impairment. He was arrested by the Indian authorities a decade ago when he was barely 20 years old for staying in the country illegally, according to prison records cited by the Indian media.

He was not booked for criminal activity but for a simple violation of visa and passport rules under clauses of the Indian Passport Act and the Foreigners Act — like most of the presumed Pakistani inmates.

Although the youth was handed down a two-year jail term, he has spent the last eight years of his life in prison. His speech impairment probably does not allow him to share any details about his early life in Pakistan. Civil society groups in India and Pakistan should play their role by undertaking a series of collaborative measures to determine the youth’s identity and his address. Fifty-seven-year-old Shukla Ghosh has spent the last 17 years in the central jail’s transit camp even after serving out her jail term of one year.

Earlier this month India’s Additional Solicitor General Satya Pal Jain told the Punjab and Haryana High Court that Pakistani authorities and other governments had not given an adequate response to the case of prisoners being held in the transit camp.

Legal experts believe these prisoners have reached a dead-end as they have no hope of release. Neither India nor Pakistan is serious about these inmates — almost all of whom have completed their sentences. Given the mutual hostility between the two states, things are unlikely to change.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 21^st, 2017.

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