A regular day would begin thus:

The prisoners were forced to wake up by 6.30 am. After finishing their morning chores they swept the prison floors from 8.30 am to 9 am. They were then returned to their cells where they stayed for the next two hours. At 11 am the jail staff would take 30 to 40 prisoners to work on the prison's garden and farm, clean toilets, and other duties that required rigorous manual effort.

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This routine would continue for about two hours after which the prisoners were served a bowl of dal and two rotis. Once lunch ended at 1.30 pm the prisoners would return to manual labour. The day for the Indian prisoners usually ended at 3 pm after which they returned to their cells that had no electricity and was infested with flies and mosquitoes.

At times, Karsan says, prisoners were beaten to death for small mistakes. Once when he failed to get ready, the warden forced him to strip and flogged the Indian fisherman with his broad belt.

"Abusing our mothers and sisters was routine. The day the jail superintendent was scheduled to visit the prison the wardens would cram all the injured prisoners inside the toilets and threaten us not to make any noise. A common threat was: If you try to make any noise we will shove our lathis (batons) up your a@#$%," says Karsan. Cowering under the fear of physical harm no prisoner would dare make a noise.

For all the pain inflicted on the Indian prisoners he has some kind words for his captors. "Whatever they did to us they never hurt our religious sentiments. They never abused our religion or gods. In fact, we had a small makeshift temple inside every cell and we were allowed to worship," he adds.

"Apart from this spiritual luxury the prisoners were treated absolutely inhumanly," he says, alleging that the prisoners were sometimes starved to death.

Image: The address to which relatives of an Indian fisherman arrested in Pakistan send mail.

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