Let them go

Crowded out by 8220;the big issues8221; that mark the India-Pakistan encounter are a group of people who seldom invite attention: lowly Indian or Pakistani nationals who find themselves locked up in the prisons of the neighbouring country with no prospects of succour and few entitlements to justice worth the name. That8217;s precisely why the Supreme Court order on Thursday, directing the release and deportation of those Pakistani prisoners who have served out their sentence in India and are not detained under any orders passed under the Foreigners Act, assumes significance.

It is well-known, of course, that both India and Pakistan are holding several nationals from each other8217;s country in their jails. Many of them are innocent of wrongful intent and have, like Munir, the Pakistani boy whom the prime minister allowed to go home the other day, accidentally strayed across the border and paid grievously for that carelessness. Others, having faced charges of espionage, have often served their terms several times over and still cannot go home because they have got so impossibly entangled in bureaucratic red tape. Sometimes they lose their identities in the process and have no home or even nation to call their own. Since they are without clout and have nobody searching for them back home, or fighting their cause in the land of their incarceration, they are rendered faceless and forgotten. Think, for instance, of Roop Lal who came back to India in April 2002 after spending over 25 years in Pakistani prisons. If it had not been for the persistence of human rights activists in Pakistan like Brigadier Rao Abid, he would still have been behind prison walls.

There are also questions of natural justice with regard to procedures that are very often overlooked in these cases. As the amicus curiae pointed out in the latest instance, the government had no business in keeping Pakistani nationals lodged in prison after they had served their sentence, and suggested that separate shelters be made available to them until they are formally released. This, then, is a humanitarian issue that goes beyond the compulsions of reciprocity and narrowly defined national interest. The Supreme Court was only recognising this in its recent direction.