Back from dead: Pakistani fishermen found in Indian jail

[Neo]

Back from dead: Pakistani fishermen found in Indian jail

Wednesday, December 09, 2009

KARACHI: It's been a decade since Mai Bhagi saw her brother and nephews. For years she thought the fishermen had died when their rickety Pakistani boat was shredded in a cyclone.

Then came a cry for help in a letter from an Indian jail that proved they were alive and spurred the illiterate woman to struggle for their release.Her task, some officials say, has become harder since Islamist gunmen set sail from Pakistan a year ago and went on the rampage in Mumbai, killing 166 people.

Fishermen from nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan regularly stray across sea borders, where they are arrested, taken ashore to be charged or left languishing in cells without trial, activists say.

“After a frantic search in the Arabian Sea we thought the cyclone ate them up,” said Bhagi, a tall woman with wrinkled forehead and brooding eyes, wearing a traditional dress embroidered with colourful flowers.

She last saw her relatives in 1999, shortly before a cyclone smashed into the tiny town of Shah Bunder along the southern Pakistani coast. Dozens of fishermen were trapped at sea. Some never returned Bhagi’s brother Usman Jutt, nephews Nawaz and Sachoo and cousin Zaman included.

“I waited. We all waited for them to come back home, but they didn’t,” said 60-year-old Bhagi. A family of six women and half a dozen children was left penniless. Bhagi realised it was time to break the centuries-old tradition of the Jutt clan and leave home.

“We had no fortunes left in Shah Bunder so we decided to move to Karachi. We women are generally banned from leaving home whether there is sickness or death, we cannot leave the threshold after getting married,” she said.

The family moved to the impoverished suburb of Rerhi. They sold the embroidery and handicrafts that each Jutt woman learns in childhood; Bhagi took jobs at construction sites and as a maid.

The family built a straw and mud-brick hut -without electricity or clean drinking water and crawling with insects and small reptiles. Then out of the blue, her brother got in touch. “After five years, my brother sent us a letter through the Indian authorities from a jail in Ahmedabad asking me to campaign for their release.”

She was told he was charged with smuggling: “My brother went fishing when the Indians arrested them and framed them with charges of smuggling. They had nothing but a fishing boat and their nets.”

Bhagi made contact with a local charity, the Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum, which helped arrange meetings with the relevant authorities. “Since then I’ve been running pillar to post, meeting ministers and officers and even appearing on television from time to time,” said Bhagi.

Officials in Pakistan say nearly 200 fishermen are in Indian custody. In India, the Gujarat state police and coast guard confirm 125 Pakistani fishermen are held and 65 boats have been seized. In the past, the two countries have periodically released hundreds of detained fishermen in prisoner exchanges.

One Pakistani official told AFP the Indian authorities promised to release more fishermen, but the plan was shelved after the Mumbai attack that New Delhi blamed on a Pakistan-based extremist Islamist group.

Officials now tell Bhagi her relatives will only be released once relations between the two neighbours improve. But a senior police official in Gujarat denied the attacks had affected possible releases and said Pakistani fishermen held longer than three years had been charged with crimes.

“India at present has 125 Pakistani fishermen in their custody. There are some other Pakistani nationals who have been booked under other criminal charges for smuggling banned substances,” said the official, Wabang Jamil.

In Pakistan, officials say about 500 Indian fishermen are languishing in jail. About 400 of them are held in Karachi’s Malir District Prison, Ashraf Nizamani, the jail superintendent, told AFP.

“Many of the prisoners have completed their sentences and we are waiting for the government’s order to release them,” he said. “They will be released after the governments (of Pakistan and India) swap each other’s prisoners.”

Saami Memon, spokesman for the Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum, said most of the detainees were illiterate fishermen unaware of the sea borders, caught up in the long-running rivalry between the nuclear-armed neighbours.

But as diplomatic tensions drag on, hundreds of fishermen remain in limbo. “I want to go to my home in Gujarat. I want to reunite with my family,” said 17-year-old Indian prisoner Bhagwan Bana from a Karachi jail. “It is difficult to live in a prison. I never dreamt that I would go to jail and be punished without committing any crime.”