Peace process or no peace process, some Indo-Pak things don’t change. A curious tale of a kidnapping narrated by the alleged “victim,” the son of a Pakistan High Commission staffer, a peremptory dismissal by the Delhi police and the MEA, a 10-hour drama—and now a fullscale diplomatic row.The issue, which could have been resolved without much fuss, has escalated to the extent that Pakistan Foreign secretary Riaz Mohammed Khan took up the matter with Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran in Dhaka on the margins of the Saarc summit.Roshan Ali, 19, son of Pak mission staffer Asghar Ali, returned home at 2.30 am today alleging he was kidnapped by masked men on Tuesday evening in south Delhi—where he studies at NIIT—taken to an undisclosed location and photographed holding a knife, smeared with blood, with “three dead bodies” as the backdrop.On his return, he told a nervous family—which had by then already alerted the Delhi police—that he was dropped off at India Gate from where he walked back to the mission. His “abductors,” he claimed, gave him a note in Hindi asking him to leave the country within five days or “head for the gallows.” With the Delhi police saying that the note is fudged, the Ministry of External Affairs promptly called this a “fabricated story’’, indicating that Roshan Ali may have pulled a prank. This response came just hours after Pakistan protested the incident in Delhi and Islamabad where India’s Acting High Commissioner was summoned and handed over a protest note.Islamabad has asked New Delhi to investigate the matter and also attached the “threat” note. ‘‘(It) openly professes that the abductors were in possession of Roshan Ali’s photographs which can lead him to gallows. It is an obvious reference to the photographs taken with dead bodies under duress and sedation,’’ claims Pakistan.However, the police later told MEA that the handwriting in the note matched that of Rahul Sharma, another NIIT student. And that Rahul has claimed that Roshan asked him to write such a letter in Hindi as he wanted to “scare his friends” in Pakistan.While the police is clearly hinting at a prank, Pakistani authorities say they are disappointed at the manner in which the MEA has tried to discredit the complaint, especially when the mission allowed a police official to meet Roshan.Another official is expected to meet him tomorrow although differences have arisen over the insistence by the police that the boy should come to the police station.
