By Staff Reporter
KARACHI: Eleven Pakistani fishermen who spent between four and nine years in Indian jails after their boats strayed into Indian waters were reunited with their families in Karachi on Friday.
The men were driven from Lahore in Edhi Foundation ambulances and reached the Edhi Centre near Merewether Tower. Their relatives had been waiting there since the morning.
Kamal Hassan Bengali, of Machhar Colony, was held for eight years. He came home to a family that had grown in his absence, and to the news that his mother would not be there to greet him.
“The day our boat was captured by the Indian coast guard was the day my mother passed away. I only learned about her passing through a letter which reached me three years later,” he told Dawn newspaper, holding his eight-year-old niece, Areeba, close.
“I am meeting her for the first time,” he said, smiling through tears.
Bengali said the boat’s engine failed and it drifted towards Indian waters.
All seven of his brothers and his sister have married in the eight years he was away. His sister, Manzoora, said responsibility for finding him a match now fell to her, since their mother was gone. “I will get him married soon now that he is back home,” she said.
Noor Nabi Bengali, also of Machhar Colony, was on the same boat. He recalled the food in detention. “We were given bad food. The lentils and plain rice or the potato and cauliflower curry that we were fed in jail would stink sometimes because it had gone bad,” he said.
Abdul Rehman, of Korangi, was held for nine years. “I only remember the horrible jail food and the lonely days I spent behind bars in India,” he said. “The attitude of the jail staff toward us Pakistanis never let me forget for a minute that we were in an enemy country. They treated us worse than animals.”
Several of the men said the experience had changed what they intend to do next.
Khamiso Siddiq Mallah, 60, of Shah Bandar, who spent almost four years in custody, said he would not fish again. “I will become a labourer, but I will never go back to sea,” he said.
Basheer, of Machhar Colony, said fishing was all he knew and he could not give it up if he wanted to earn a living. He said he would stay away from Sindh’s waters, however. “I’ll fish in Balochistan, which doesn’t touch the Indian border,” he said. He said he had lost 70 pounds in jail and intended to eat well to regain it.
Mehboob Ali Mullah, of Badin, was held for three and a half years. He still had to travel to his village to see his three children, he said. “My journey doesn’t end here,” he said.
Among those watching the reunions was Saleem Sabro, from Thatta, who has been searching for his missing fisherman brother, Ahmed Ali, for five years. He said he comes whenever fishermen return from India in case his brother is among them, and he studied Basheer’s face closely on Friday. “He looks like my brother,” he said.
Sabro said a fisherman freed last year had told him his brother was held in a jail in Ahmedabad. He has since contacted the Pakistan embassy in Delhi, the foreign ministry and the Ansar Burney Trust, a non-governmental organisation. “He served his sentence two years ago, but still he has not returned home,” he said. In the meantime, he said, he had married off his brother’s two daughters and found the man’s young son an apprenticeship with a motor mechanic.
Local media reported that 14 Pakistanis in all were released from Indian custody. Eleven reached Karachi and two were collected by relatives in Lahore. A man described as mentally ill was kept in Lahore because his biometric data was not available.
Fatima Majeed Motani, chairperson of the Fishermen’s Cooperative Society, said more than 70 Pakistani fishermen who crossed into Indian waters unknowingly are still in Indian jails. Figures published after the latest exchange of prisoner lists between the two countries, around the start of July, put the number at 53, against 198 Indian fishermen held in Pakistan.
Campaigners in India say 188 of those Indians have completed their sentences and had their nationality confirmed, yet remain in prison. Groups on both sides of the border have called for a “no arrest” policy for fishermen who cross the maritime boundary by accident. The boundary is poorly marked in places and many wooden boats carry no equipment to fix their position.
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