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'The jail authorities tried to snatch my children'

Three horrid years after he and his children were thrown into the Karachi Central Jail, 50-year-old Ashok Kumar stepped home, over the Radcliffe Line, at Wagah Monday.

"We have returned to our country," Kumar's 10-year-old Ajay told Amar, his younger by three years.

Kumar -- with him Ajay, Amar and Samunder, now four - was jailed for not possessing valid travel documents. This family is among the 14 prisoners who were repatriated through the Wagah check-post. In exchange, 43 Pakistan nationals, jailed in Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir for periods extending from one year to 12 years, were handed over to Pakistan.

Among these were two mentally deranged Indians, and 35-year-old Alla Datta, a Pakistani, who has been detained in Jammu for the last 12 years.

Though initially a list of 16 Indians, including a mentally sick woman, was given to the Indian authorities, the Pakistani officials at the last moment informed that only 14 prisoners were being repatriated now. S C Roy, under secretary in the ministry of external affairs, oversaw the exercise.

Kumar said a quarrel with his wife made him leave his home in Sonepat, Haryana. He managed a visa for Afghanistan and with his children travelled to Pakistan on the Samjhauta Express, en route to the Afghan border.

There, however, the Pakistan authorities arrested him, claiming he did not have valid documents. His appeals to send him and his children back to India cut no ice, and he ended up in the Karachi jail.

"We were not ill-treated there," Kumar said, "But the jail authorities tried to snatch my children."

Though the younger boys were not aware of their mother, Ajay had a vivid picture of her. ''I do not know if my mother will be at home to welcome us..." he told newsmen, "Father wrote several letters to her from jail but never received a reply.''

Mohammed Rukman, a Jodhpur resident, arrested by the Pakistan Rangers after he crossed over accidentally, and Hansraj from Bihar, were both mentally unstable. They did not remember anything about their detention.

Likewise, Alla Datta, who was mentally deranged when the Border Security Force arrested him in the Jammu sector, do not remember anything about his life in prison. Or, for that matter, about his life in Pakistan either.

A few prisoners, both from India and Pakistan, claimed that they were ill-treated and tortured. Some of them, it would appear, were branded as spies initially and forced to make confessional statements.

A majority of the Pakistani prisoners arrested along the Punjab border claimed that they had accidentally strayed into Indian territory.

Even after serving their terms, they remained behind bars as no efforts were made by any human rights organisation or the officials of their parent country to get them released, they alleged.

UNI

EARLIER REPORT:

India, Pak to exchange 63 prisoners

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