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| India-Pakistan |
| New hope for Indian kins of PoWs in Pak |
| 2008-03-04 |
| CHANDIGARH: President Pervez Musharraf's belated gesture of pardoning 67-year-old Kashmir Singh, an Indian spy who endured 35 excruciating years on death row in Pakistani prisons, has rekindled anticipation amidst 54 Indian families, whose kin have been missing since being taken prisoner in the wars of 1971 and 1965. "Hope is the ultimate casualty in any war and we are not yet ready to give up," says Dr Simmi Waraich, whose father, Major S.P.S. Waraich of the 15 Punjab Regiment, went missing in December 1971 during battle at Hussainiwala in the Ferozepur sector. The young psychiatrist, like the dozens of other PoW relatives, has struggled to keep her brave father "alive" through years of IndiaÂ’s political and military establishment telling them it was "futile to expect miracles". Kashmir Singh, a former Indian Army soldier of HoshiarpurÂ’s Nangal Choran village, was arrested in Lahore and Charged with espionage in 1973. A Pakistani military court sentenced him to death and he has since been kept in continual solitary confinement with only a 30-minute break to stretch his aching limbs each day. It is the former spyÂ’s endurance and his will to survive an ordeal beyond description that has renewed hopes. "If a man like Kashmir Singh could live through three decades of torment there would surely be others," says Mr S.S. Gill, whose older brother, Wing Commander Harsern Singh Gill was taken prisoner after his fighter went down in 1971. The families have until now based their crusade for the location of the missing PoWs around a huge volume of evidence (see box) painstakingly collected through the years. And now Kashmir SinghÂ’s incredible story, they say, lends further legitimacy to the notion that many Indian servicemen could still be alive out of sight and memory in the maze of PakistanÂ’s prison system. Just 30 years old when arrested, Kashmir Singh is said to have voluntarily embraced Islam to lessen his torture in jail. The prisoner was introduced to PakistanÂ’s caretaker human rights minister, Mr Ansar Burney, who orchestrated his pardon, as "Ibrahim Iqbal" inside Lahore Jail. "This is exactly what we have been telling the authorities both in India and in Pakistan. Many of our people may be under changed names. Some of them could well have become insane or amnesiacs," Mr Gill said insisting that the search for the missing PoWs will need to begin with a thorough perusal of the war records alongside both district and state prison registers. "The Pakistani officers who took our people prisoner also need to be interviewed." Dr Simmi Waraich and Mr Gill accompanied 14 missing PoW relatives to Pakistan in what turned out to be a fruitless search for their loved ones last year. Even though the visit had come through on a personal invitation of President Musharraf and this was a first-of-its-kind exercise in the world, they were given very limited access to the records at the ten jails they visited over 13 days in June. The relatives were denied crucial access to the Attock Fort prison, known to have housed large numbers of Indian PoWs. In fact, one of the first firm evidences that PoWs were being held beyond the purview of international conventions came from Attock Fort. Mohan Lal Bhaskar, an Indian spy who was repatriated in December 1974, stated in a sworn testimony that two Pakistani Army officers, Major Ayaz Ahmed Sipra and Col. Asif Shafi, who were incarcerated at Attock Fort for their role in an abortive coup against Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1973, later met him inside LahoreÂ’s Kot Lakhpat Jail and told him that there were more than 45 Indian officers inside the fort. They specifically named Wing Commander H.S. Gill and one Capt. Singh. "The problem with locating our people is that most of them were initially held inside makeshift PoW camps and possibly later interned to regular prisons," said Mr Gill. He believes that the more recent instances of Mohammed Arif and Jagsir Singh, two Indian soldiers who were repatriated in April 2004 after capture during the 1999 Kargil War, are illustrative. "There is no record of Jagsir and Arif from 1999 to 2004 when they suddenly showed as interns at the Rawalpindi Jail. So how and where were they held for four years? Very obviously in some military establishment," he said. Simmi Waraich is convinced that the passing of three decades since the 1971 war has led to a growing apathy amidst both the Indian and Pakistani establishments. "So many, including my father, are still missing, yet there has been no independent or mutual attempt to establish an official mechanism to find these men," she points out. IndiaÂ’s ministry of defence has been toying with the prospect of setting up a "missing in action cell" on the lines of then in western nations like the USA, but nothing has moved on the ground. And reflecting a clearly callous attitude to the problem, while parliamentary records continue to show 54 missing PoWs, both the Army and Air Force insist they are missing no one. "There appears to be a strange embarrassment about acknowledging even the possibility of old PoWs on both sides of the border," says Dr Simmi. This shows each time the missing menÂ’s relatives approach the authorities. When a delegation of relatives met defence minister Pranab Mukherjee some years ago, he heard them out patiently only to respond with: "Do you really think they (the PoWs) are still alive?" Ms Damayanti Tambay, the wife of Flt. Lt. V.V. Tambay who failed to return despite the Pakistani press widely reporting his capture in 1971, quietly responded: "But minister, you are still alive, no?" PakistanÂ’s former high commissioner in Delhi, Mr Riaz Khokhar, too publicly admitted to the possibility of PoWs being held on both sides. He told an Indian TV channel that his country had given up on the 300-odd Pakistani PoWs believed to be in India. "Wo hamare liye shaheed ho chuke hain (they have become martyrs for us)," he said obliquely suggesting that India must do the same. But for the 54 families it is no longer a question of their own kin. "We should be able to get back a handful, even one," says Mr Gill. Simmi Waraich adds, "It is not about closure. If they are alive they must be brought home. And till that happens our lives will continue to be on hold." |
| Posted by:john frum |