No place like home: Indian fishermen to be released from jail today

The freed men will travel to the Wagah border and be handed over to the Indian authorities.

KARACHI: About 180 Indian fishermen arrested for straying into Pakistani waters will be released from Malir jail today. They will travel to the Wagah border where they will be handed over to the Indian authorities.

After this batch, 362 more Indian prisoners will be left in Pakistan, said a member of the Pakistan-India judicial committee on prisoners, Justice (retd) Nasir Aslam Zahid, on Friday.

Last year India freed 200 Pakistani prisoners but 440 men remain incarcerated across the border, added former law minister Iqbal Haider. These fishermen sometimes languish in jails in the neighbourhing country for years as their families struggle to make ends meet back home.

A body that fights for the rights of fishing communities, the Pakistan Fisher Folk Forum, has said that the imprisonment of 61 Pakistani fishermen has still not been acknowledged by the Indian authorities.

These people were captured in either 1993 or 1999. “The prisoners who have returned to Pakistan claimed that they had met these other fishermen during their detention,” said the forum’s Muhammad Ali Shah.

He demanded that the authorities return the boats seized by the Indian Coast Guard and the Pakistan Maritime Security Agency.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 7^th, 2012.