Talks spell hope for Pak prisoners

Chandigarh: With commencement of talks between India and Pakistan, 60-odd Pakistanis languishing in Amritsar central jail are hesitantly mustering up courage to hope again for their release from prison.
Their real-life stories may not be the stuff of Squadron Leader Veer Pratap Singh’s life in the Bollywood blockbuster “Veer-Zaara”, but their ordeal has turned out to be a similar one.They have spent a lifetime in jail in an alien land, without hearing a word from home.
All the 60 Pakistani nationals have completed their period of imprisonment but their confinement continues, for Pakistan is yet to own them up despite repeated reminders from Indian government, authorities revealed.
SP jail, Amritsar, Gursewak Singh Sidhu, said, “We have written several times to ministry of home affairs (MHA) about their deportation. Their reply is the just the same- that there is no response from the neighbouring country.”
Sixtyfive-year-old Abdul Sharif of Baluchistan is the oldest prisoner in the jail. He had completed four-year rigorous imprisonment sentence in 1997. By this time, he has spent nearly 30 years in India. Though courts have directed the state to deport him as soon as possible, he is still lodged in the jail, awaiting response from his country to own him. All this while, he has written hundreds of letters to his family back home, but there was never a response. Having lost all hope, he has now stopped writing those letters.
Mukhtar Ahmed of Karachi had also completed 10-year imprisonment under Explosive Act in 2000, but home still seems years away in absence of any response from across the border.
DGP prison Anil Kaushik, told TOI all Pakistani inmates had to be lodged together. “They can’t be kept separately due to security reasons. The same is the case with convicted Nigerians, as their country takes some time before owning them up.”
Most of the Pak inmates were convicted under NDPS Act, Explosive Act, Passport and Foreigner Act.
The state jail authority is currently spending Rs 1.50 lakh every month on these inmates. The state jail, tourism and cultural affairs minister, Hira Singh Gabria, has openly stated foreigner prisoners are proving a burden on state exchequer, but no easy relief seems to be in the offing unless the ongoing talks bear fruit.