Hamid Ansari’s return to his country – and the heartwarming reactions of his parents, Fauzia and Nehal – and all the other people who fought tooth and nail to bring him back home, was touching, and iconic, to say the least.
The 33-year-old man had been caught by Pakistan’s security forces back in 2012, after he had entered the country illegally, in search for a woman he had met online and fallen in love with. However, his cross-border love story wasn’t meant to be, as the military courts in Pakistan accused him of espionage and of being an ‘Indian spy’.
But Ansari isn’t the only one who was thrown into Pakistan’s jails based on alleged charges of being an ‘Indian spy’. Many more cases, many more heartbreaks have taken place over the past 20 years, where Indian men were forced to stay locked up in Pakistan’s jails, away from their families, after being labelled ‘Indian spies’.
Here’s the story of others who experienced the same fate.
Kulbhushan Jadhav
Former Indian Navy man Kulbhushan Jadhav had reportedly obtained a fake Pakistani passport, in the name of Hussein Mubarak Patel from Pune in November 2003. In March 2016, Jadhav was reportedly arrested in a Pakistani counter-intelligence operation in Balochistan, where he had entered from Iran.
The Pakistan military court accused him of being a R&AW (Research and Analysis Wing) agent and planning "subversive activities". However, the Indian government claimed that Jadhav had been picked up from Iran by the Pakistan ISI.
Within a week of Jadhav’s arrest, Pakistan’s armed forces had released an alleged ‘confession video’, which showed Jadhav confessing that he had been recruited by R&AW agents to plan and organise espionage and sabotage with the aim to wage war against Pakistan, an Economic Times report stated.
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However, Sartaj Aziz, Adviser to the Pakistani Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs, in December 2016 had said that Pakistan’s dossier to the UN against Jadhav and R&AW did not contain any “conclusive statements” and was all based on “mere statements”, the report added.
Meanwhile, the Indian government had attempted to gain consular access to Jadhav at least 15 different times, but these were all denied by Pakistan, which reiterated its belief that Jadhav was involved in “subversive activities”. The public hearing in Jadhav’s complicated case has been pushed to February 2019.
Sarabjit Singh
An Indian farmer who was convicted by the Supreme Court of Pakistan for being responsible for bomb blasts that took place in Lahore and Faisalabad in 1990, Singh was locked in jail until May 2013 when he suffered serious injuries after allegedly being attacked by his fellow inmates, India Today reported. Singh passed away on 2 May 2013.
Singh was reportedly caught in an unmarked Indo-Pakistani border area and was picked up and arrested by the Pakistan Rangers near Kasur in 1990. While he was initially arrested for illegally crossing the border, eight days after his arrest, he was charged for the Lahore blasts of that year, the report added.
However, the Indian government claimed that the arrest had been a case of mistaken identity, as the farmer, who was drunk at the time, had only accidentally strayed over the border.
A year later, his family was informed that he had been given the death sentence and was being tried as ‘Manjt Singh’. This was later changed to a life sentence.
Despite a dozen mercy petitions, containing atleast a 1,000 signatures was presented to the Pakistan court for his release, the court refused to budge, India Today stated.
Kashmir Singh
A 77-year-old man from Chandigarh, Kashmir Singh, spent 35 years in a Pakistan prison after being charged as an ‘Indian spy’ in 1973. Throughout the course of his extensive jail time, he never once admitted to the charges, The Hindu reported.
When he was finally repatriated in 2008, he received a warm welcome from his family and countrymen, who celebrated his homecoming of 35 years. It was only later, in an interview with PTI, that he admitted to having been recruited by the Military Intelligence (MI), to spy for India.
Speaking to The Hindu, Singh’s wife claimed that far from getting any kind of reward from the government, it completely washed its hands off him after his arrest in 1973. Singh claimed that he was paid a salary of Rs 480 every month by the MI and told the newspaper:
“I was approached by a recruiter of the Army intelligence. I was asked if I was willing to go to Pakistan. I readily accepted the offer.”Kashmir Singh to The Hindu
Singh currently lives in Hoshiarpur with his family.
Gurbaksh Ram
Indian national Gurbaksh Ram spent 18 years in Pakistan’s Kot Lakhpat jail, on charges of spying. Ram was arrested in 1988, to gather information on the arms and ammunitions that were used by the Pakistan military, The Times of India reported.
After finding out the information, he was returning to India, when he was caught on the border by Pakistan’s security forces, News18 reported. He was then taken to Sialkot's Gora jail for questioning and was locked up there for around two-and-a-half years. In the meantime, the Pakistan military also found the secret documents he had collected and he was promptly sentenced to 14 more years in prison. Ram was finally released in 2006 and back in 2013, was looking for a government job.
While the cases being mentioned here were instances of Indian nationals crossing the border and then being held back in Pakistan on charges of being an ‘Indian spy’, there is one highly controversial case of an ISRO scientist named Nambi Narayanan, who had been accused by the Indian government of trading India’s space secrets to foreign agents (in Pakistan) for money and other hefty promises. It took Narayanan 24 years to clear his name, when the Supreme Court in September 2018 said that Narayanan had been framed based on “some kind of fancy or notion,” The Hindu reported.
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