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Hope keeps them going

Nirupama Subramanian

Indian families search for their loved ones in Pakistan jails

— Photo: AFP

IN SEARCH OF KIN: Damyan Tambay, member of an Indian delegation, shows pictures of her husband who went missing after the 1971 war between Pakistan and India, in Karachi on Sunday.

ISLAMABAD: After a fruitless visit to Kot Lakhpat jail in Lahore, a group of 14 Indians who are searching for their relatives missing in action from the 1971 war, will visit Karachi Central Jail on Monday.

They are pinning their hopes for this visit on a letter written in 1975 by Major Ashok Suri to his elder brother Bharat Suri, in which he said 20 Indian officers were in this jail.

"He somehow managed to send that letter, we have it in the original with us, Bharat Suri is also with us, and we are hoping to find some information during our visit to this particular jail, some clues," said G.H Gill, whose brother, H.S. Gill, an officer with the Indian Air Force is also missing from the 1971 war.

Families of 54 missing men believe their loved ones could be still alive in jails in Pakistan. The Pakistan Government has said it is not holding any Indian prisoners of war, but the Indian delegation wants to explore the possibility that the missing men may have given wrong names at the time of capture and are being held not as prisoners of war, but as ordinary prisoners.

The group, which is on a two-week tour of 10 prisons in Pakistan at the invitation of President Pervez Musharraf, spent time on Saturday talking to 59 Indian prisoners in Kot Lakhpat jail.

"We were allowed to meet them and talk to them. Some of them had lost their mental balance, but the earliest case among them was 1982," said Mr. Gill.

The one-hour interaction took place in the forecourt of the jail, just beyond the reception area. The visiting Indians were carrying pictures of their missing relatives and a copy of Victoria Schoefield's book, Bhutto: Trial and Execution, which quotes the Pakistan Prime Minister, who was executed in 1979 saying during his imprisonment that he was kept in a barrack in Kot Lakhpat next to another barrack with 20 Indian services personnel.

But jail officials told the visitors they were unaware of this.

Suresh Reddy, visa counsellor at the Indian High Commission in Islamabad, who is accompanying the group, said the prisoners shown to them in Lahore were those that had already been identified through an ongoing process of consular access. There was no chance that anyone from the 1971 war would have been among those prisoners.

Mr. Gill said the Indian prisoners in Kot Lakhpat said they had no knowledge of any Indian defence personnel being held in the jail. The visitors asked to see any other Indian prisoners being held in the jail, but the jail authorities said there were no more.

"We have to believe them," he said. The jail authorities did not produce Sarabjit Singh, who is being held in the same jail, and has been sentenced to death for his alleged involvement in a bomb explosion in Lahore. His family in India has appealed to President Musharraf for clemency.

But the jail officials did open out their record books for the visitors to examine all entries from 1971, but it was all written up in Urdu, which none of the visiting party can read, and the records themselves running into thousands of names.

"They have offered that we can come back and go through the records again with someone who can read it," Mr. Gill said. The visit did not yield anything for the visitors, but Mr. Gill said they had not lost hope yet.

"Beginning of tour"

"This is just the beginning of our tour. We have to visit many other jails," he said.

The Indian delegation has also faxed a request to President Musharraf requesting for a meeting with him. "We are awaiting the response," Mr. Gill said.

Mr. Reddy said the Indian High Commission had made a request to the Pakistan Government for the delegation to visit the military jail in Attock, but so far it had not been granted.

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