Humiliation routine for Indians in Pak

Himanshu Kaushik TNN 

Ahmedabad: If an Indian wants something as basic as a soap for bathing in a Pakistani prison, he has to wash undergarments of Pakistani inmates. And this is among many humiliations meted out to Indians behind bars across the border.
    Fishermen from Gujarat often suffer the soul-destroying experiences in Pakistan as the country’s Maritime Security Agency routinely picks them up for venturing too close to their waters. Currently, 483 Gujarati fishermen are in Pakistani prisons.
    Indian prisoners are served dry rotis with dishwater and are made to clean the prisons. Torture of the extreme kind is also a routine affair.
    “More than the food, it is the humiliation by both inmates and officials that you can’t digest after a point. If you complain, you have to be ready for torture,” said Kanji Bariya, a fisherman from Porbandar, who returned from a Pakistani jail three years back. He spent two years behind bars there.
    “During inspections, lower rank officials would threaten us to keep our mouth shut or face the consequences,” he said. “Once, several Indian prisoners went on a hunger strike in Landhi jail in Karachi after we were forced to eat nonvegetarian food. The superintendent heard our pleas and ensured vegetarian meals. The consequence was that once the superintendant left, two prisoners held me down and a jail official repeatedly hit me on my private parts.”
    Ramji Babu, another fishermen from Porbandar who spent 11 months in a Pakistani jail before his release in 2008, saw his fellow inmate tortured to death. “Bhagwan Das was tortured to death, but when human right activists came for an inquiry, we were tutored to say that he was electrocuted while switching on a washing machine,” he said. “We were told that we would meet Das’s fate if we said anything different.”
    Babu added the jail was spread over 14 lakh square yards and cleaning it was largely the responsibility of the Indian inmates. 
Centre asks states to beef up security for Pak inmates 
New Delhi: Immediately after news of Sarabjit Singh’s death was flashed on TV news channels, the Centre on early Thursday morning re-issued its advisory to all states asking them to step up security of their respective jails, where around 220 Pakistani prisoners are lodged.
    Twenty Pakistani prisoners are lodged in the high-security Tihar Jail in the national Capital, whereas the rest are in prisons located in Rajasthan, Jammu and Kashmir, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra.
    Twelve out of 20 in Tihar Jail are convictedPakistani prisoners, whereas the rest are undertrails. Most of the Pakistani prisoners were arrested on charges of terrorism and drug peddling.
    Repeating what it had said in its earlier note after the assault on Sarabjit last week, the Union home ministry on Thursday asked the states to ensure proper security to the Pakistani prisoners expressing apprehension that they may be targeted as a reaction to the attack on Sarabjit. Some of the terrorists lodged in Tihar Jail are Mohammad Arif, who is a convict in the Red Fort attack case, and Khalid Mehmood. TNN