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Judges’ panel: ease visa restrictions

ISLAMABAD: An India-Pakistan committee of retired judges has asked the Pakistan government to immediately free all Indian fishermen in jails here, recommending that their prosecution be withdrawn and they be granted remission of sentences.

Over 400 Indian fishermen are in custody in Pakistan, charged with or sentenced for crossing into Pakistani territorial waters. Of these, 34 under-aged fishermen are lodged at the Youthful Offenders Industrial School in Karachi, while the rest are in the Malir Jail.

The judges’ committee was set up earlier this year to go into the conditions of nationals of the two countries in each other’s jails and make recommendations for the humane treatment of the prisoners.

The Foreign Ministry on Saturday released the recommendations of the eight judges — four each from India and Pakistan — after their June 9-13 tour of Pakistani prisons in Karachi, Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi and Kot Lakhpat in Lahore.

Among the committee’s wide-ranging recommendations is the institution of procedures by both governments to ensure that when a national of the other country dies in custody, his or her High Commission is immediately informed and the body sent back at the earliest and not later than three weeks. The judges have said a copy of the inquest or inquiry report into the death, if any, and of the post mortem should be handed over to the High Commission.

The recommendations came as the bodies of two Pakistanis, Rashida Bibi and Abdul Alim, who died in custody in India, were sent back home on Friday several weeks after their deaths, that too following the intervention of the judges’ committee. Pakistan reacted to the arrival of the bodies by reiterating “deep concern” at the treatment of its nationals in Indian jails.

In a statement, the Foreign Ministry also asked the Indian government to investigate the cause of the death of these prisoners as well as two others who died in Indian custody and whose bodies were returned earlier this year. The judges have also recommended that on compassionate grounds, cases against visa violators — those caught for overstaying or going to places other than allowed by the visa — as well as women prisoners, juveniles, the terminally ill or ailing, physically or mentally disabled prisoners be withdrawn, to facilitate their release and repatriation at the “earliest.”

For those serving sentences, the judges have recommended a remission. The committee has also recommended that the benefit of remission be extended to “security” prisoners. Further, the committee wants the two governments to identify prisoners from both sides who could be considered for early release and expedite their repatriation. It wants all prisoners whose national identity has been verified to be released immediately, and has asked the governments to complete verification of the others before the committee meets again in India in July.

The committee has recommended that in all cases, the governments must provide consular access to the other’s nationals within a month, and the verification process to be expedited.

The judges said they will tour Indian prisons from July 20-27. They asked both governments to prepare full lists of each other’s national presently in their custody, so that when the lists are exchanged on July 1 as scheduled, they would be complete.

The last time the lists were exchanged, on March 31, Pakistan complained the Indian list was incomplete.

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