Around three weeks after Gujarat fisherman Bhupatbhai Vala died at a jail in Karachi, the Pakistan government handed his mortal remains over to Indian authorities at Wagah border in Punjab on Tuesday. Officials of state fisheries department said that arrangements were being made to bring his body to his native village in Gir Somnath district. “Pakistan handed over mortal remains of the fisherman between 4 pm and 5 pm on Tuesday. Required paper work is being done in Amritsar to fly the fisherman’s body to Gujarat and eventually hand it over to his family members,” an official from the fisheries department said. Vala’s mortal remains are likely to be handed over to his kin on Wednesday. Vala, a fisherman from Dudana village in Kodinar taluka of Gir Somnath, had died at Landi jail in Karachi on October 9 after complaints of breathlessness, Balu Socha, president of Samudra Shramik Sangh – a Kodinar-based NGO – working for welfare of fishermen, had said. The 55-year-old fisherman was apprehended by Pakistan Marine Security Agency while he and other fishermen were fishing on board Raj Trishul, a trawler registered in Porbandar, on December 12, 2021. News of Vala’s death was received on September 18, a day after the last rites of another fisheran from Gir Somnath district, Jagdish Mangal Bamaniya, were performed in his village of Nanavada at Kodinar taluka. Bamaniya had died at a jail in Karachi on August 6 while awaiting his repatriation. His mortal remains were handed over to his family after 42 days.
