Pakistan seeks clarity on inmate’s death

Shaukat Ali, Pakistani prisoner jailed in Indian occupied Kashmir was found dead in his cell.

ISLAMABAD:

In reaction to the death of Shaukat Ali, a Pakistani prisoner jailed in Indian occupied Kashmir who was found dead in his cell, Islamabad on Saturday said it will look into the incident.

“We have asked our High Commission in India to furnish us with more details about the incident,” Foreign Office spokesperson Tasneem Aslam said to The Express Tribune. “We have learnt from the media that a Pakistani national has committed suicide,” she added.

Aslam said that Pakistan’s high commissioner in New Delhi has been asked to contact the authorities in order to know “under which circumstances Ali committed suicide”.

The spokesperson also asked the Indian authorities to release on humanitarian grounds all such prisoners who have completed their sentences.

A resident of Sialkot, 42-year-old Ali had been lodged in a jail in Amphala, about 300 kilometres from Srinagar, since December 2011.

The spokesperson said that Ali was arrested in 2011 when he mistakenly crossed the Line of Control (LoC) and that the FO was informed in 2012 after his nationality was determined by Indian authorities. Ali was in jail while his trial was ongoing when he reportedly hanged himself with a scarf from the grill in a toilet, a jail superintendent told AFP.

According to media reports, Indian authorities assured Pakistani officials that the incident would be investigated by a magistrate and, after completion of formalities the body of the prisoner would be handed over to Pakistani authorities.

In May last year, a Pakistani prisoner died after he was savagely beaten in an Indian jail in an apparent tit-for-tat assault. The dead body of Sanaullah Ranjay arrived in Pakistan on May 9 and was taken to his hometown of Sialkot. Islamabad had demanded an international probe into the crime.


Published in The Express Tribune, February 23^rd, 2014.