Fisherman jailed in Karachi say they were kept away from visiting Indian team
VADODARA: Pakistani officials had deliberately prevented the 99 Indian fishermen, languishing in a Karachi jail, from meeting the Gujarati delegation which visited Pakistan in mid-October, one of the 99 fishermen released on November 26, alleged on Monday.
The 99 fishermen, who were in Amritsar after being released at the Wagah border, reached Vadodara around midnight.
“We were aware of Veljibhai Masai-led delegation’s visit to Pakistan five days before they arrived in Karachi on October 13th,” Mehboob Khan, one of the prisoners said.
“But we were not allowed to meet them (the delegation),” Khan alleged.
“When we asked them (jail authorities) why we were not allowed to meet the visiting delegation, they told us that some Pakistani prisoners had attempted to break the jail and escape,” he added.
The fishermen were eager to meet the members of the delegation to inform them about the torture and violation of human rights being carried out by the jail authorities, Khan said.
This meeting could have exposed the tall claims Pakistan made of looking after the arrested fishermen well, Gujarat fisheries minister Dilip Sanghani said.
We were not provided any legal counselling after the Pakistani Marine security agency arrested us from Kutch district’s Jakhau port area bordering Pakistan, two years ago, Ashvin B, another fisherman, said.
After the arrest, we were produced in a Pakistan local court only once, Ashvin added.
The poor quality of food, comprising five half-cooked rotis and dal to suffice an entire day, often made us fall sick. However, no proper medical facilities were made available to us, another fisherman said.
About 200 fishermen were kept in one big room which made it difficult for us to sleep, he said.
My family used to send me money (Indian currency) in a cover so that I could buy postal letters from jail custody to write back home, but it never reached me, Shailesh Tandel, a freed fisherman said.
After a night halt at the Vadodara railway station, the freed fishermen left for Veraval on Monday morning.
