Indian soldier returns home after 25 years in Pak prison

One of them is his son-in-law Kishan Kumar, the husband of his only daughter Sunita whom he last saw when she was just a year and a half.

And the other of course is Sunita who grew up without mother or father and whose sorrow inspired her husband’s search.

Shaharia who was sentenced to death in 1974 got his death sentence commuted to life imprisonment two years ago due to the intervention of a Pak non-governmental organisation Pakistan Human Rights Commission whose president Asma Jehangir’s name is on the lips of every member of the Kumar family. Another name they remember with gratitude is that of Brigadier Abid Hamid of the NGO who worked to get his death sentence commuted.

Dr R M Pal the editor of the Peoples’ Union for Civil Liberties Bulletin took the case to Hamid, who then appealed to the Pak Government which gifted Shaharia back his life. His life term of 25 years ended today.

Today morning Pal received the reward for all his efforts — a fax from Hamid: “Mubarkbad! Ruplal is all set to return by PK 270 on April 14. The only problem is to find two seats one for Ruplal and the other is for the first secretary of the Pakistan High Commission.” While there was no word on the tickets being confirmed, Kumar almost had an accident today as he was day dreaming about Saharia’s return while driving his scooter home.

“I was thinking of all these years I knew of him and all the years I had not known him. And I nearly met with an accident,” he says with tears in his eyes.

Kumar says he started making enquiries about Shahria soon after his marriage. “We knew that he had been sentenced to death and we began to ask for help,” says Kumar. I always believe that my wife and my father in law are the unluckiest and saddest persons on earth,” he says. Sunita grew up without both her her parents as her father had separated from her mother and remarried. Her step mother also later remarried after her father was imprisoned in Pakistan.”

Sunita was brought up by her father’s mother and later by her father’s brother in the village of Marala in Gurdaspur.

While she never got to know about her mother, she knew that her father was in a Pakistan jail from her school mates.

“My father’s letters came home but I was never allowed to read them,” she says. “He has been writing regularly after my marriage and my husband reads them as I am not very literate,” she says.

Tomorrow Shaharia will get back not just his daughter but also a son-in-law and three little grand daughters Bulbul 10, Sruti 6 and year old Dipika.

“I sought the help of every one from the sweeper to God himself to find out about Sunita’s father,” says Kumar who also according to Sunita took her to her own mother for the first time in her life.

Kumar, for whom the return of Shaharia had become a mission, does not tire as he reads out from old newspaper clippings which track the story of Shaharia since 1991, which is also when Kumar married.

Kumar does not agree that his efforts to get his father-in-law liberated were inspired solely by his love for his wife. “For me he was an Indian soldier, and above all a suffering human being,” he says.

There is jubilation in entire joint family of Kumar in Hari Nagar including his three younger brothers, his old mother, his sister Vijayalakshi who came down from Punjab for the 20th death anniversary of their father Karam Chand today. And it has been so since a TV crew told Kumar and Sunita yesterday about Shaharia’s release. They were officially informed today by the Ministry of External Affairs.