Tags:
Journalism of Courage
Police documents rarely make for sensitive literature. The records at the Jammu and Kashmir police8217;s Joint Interrogation Centre JIC in Srinagar describe one of the inmates as 8216;8216;Goonga, waldi Behra8217;8217; Dumb, son of Deaf.
It8217;s the official identity given to a teenaged lad who8217;s been at the JIC since November 2000. That was when this Pakistani shepherd was taken prisoner, having strayed into Indian territory in the Karnah sector.
For just under three years, the boy has been waiting to go home. Nobody seriously believes he8217;s a spy. Ashok Kumar Bhan, ADG, state CID is quite clear, 8216;8216;He is a deaf and dumb boy and it is painful for us to keep him here.8217;8217;
The state police has written to the Centre urging it to send the boy back to Pakistan. Now, with Munir, a similarly placed shepherd who strayed into Rajasthan, being put on the bus to Lahore on the prime minister8217;s intervention, the JIC is hopeful once more.
India8217;s most innocent prisoner can barely hear and knows only one word, 8216;8216;Amma8217;8217; or mother. His actions speak for his trauma. A policeman says it all, 8216;8216;He weeps for hours and point towards the mountains, saying 8216;Amma, Amma8217;.8217;8217;
At least Sadiq Hussain, 30, knows his address, mohalla Khas, Chucha village, tehsil Balakote, Pakistan. He used to be a bus conductor in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. Two years ago, he got off near the LoC to retrieve a tyre that had fallen from the bus roof into a ravine. The ravine was in Indian control. Today, so is Hussain.
Jammu and Kashmir has a 1,000 km border with Pakistan. Of this, 800 km is the un-demarcated Line of Control. It is sometimes impossible to tell where one country ends and the other begins.
Mohammad Sharief and Sallah Mohammad should know. Residents of Jeri Dhara, Kotli, PoK, they were grazing cattle on the Pakistani side of the Loc in April 2001, A search for two missing buffaloes took into Indian territory 8212; and to a patrol.
Earlier this summer, Ishfaq Ahmed, 17, of Shanzi, Sialkot, fought his parents and cycled off in a huff. In broad daylight he meandered into India. The Border Security Force missed him and he was only 8216;8216;found8217;8217; when he asked a bystander in Miran Sahib for the route to Sialkot.
A Jammu court gave him a 15-day sentence. It ended on June 30. Ahmed is still in Miran Sahib police station. Between his parents and him lies one frontier 8212; and two bureaucracies.
Some 30 Pakistanis are still in custody in Jammu and Kashmir despite having completed their legal prison terms. Half a dozen are plain innocent, guilty of nothing other than not understanding the LoC8217;s geography. The others are smugglers or guides.
The process of sending such people home is elaborate. The local police hands them over to the BSF. The BSF takes them to the border and to an inquisition by the Pakistan Rangers. The Rangers allow them in only when convinced they are bona fide Pakistanis, not Indian spies. In the past year, courtesy the non-relationship between the two countries, even this painful process has stalled.
Like Rishi Kapoor in Heena, Shahnaz was carried into India by swirling waters in November 1995. She had jumped into a PoK canal to commit suicide; she ended up worse than death.
Imprisoned for entering India without a visa, Shahnaz was sent to Poonch prison. Raped by the warden, she bore a daughter, Mobin. After her term ended, Pakistan told her should come home, not her child. Shahnaz was Pakistani, the argument went, but Mobin Indian.
So mother and daughter remained in prison till 2002, when the state high court ordered their release and asked the government to treat Shahnaz as an Indian citizen.
In Faridkot, the Punjab Social Welfare Department looks after eight Pakistani boys in a local reformatory. All are guilty of crossing into India without due papers, each has a sad story.
Sagar Ali, 16, was visiting relatives in Nathuwala village, just across the border in the Khemkaran sector. His cousin, Sabir, and he were sent to fetch fodder for animals. It was February 14, 2003, Valentine8217;s Day. The cousins8217; zeal took them into India. They still haven8217;t been able to get out.
Perhaps the most tragicomic story is that of Dinesh, 16, resident of Street No 13, Islamabad. A Hindu 8212; 8216;8216;I8217;m Rajput,8217;8217; he says proudly 8212; Dinesh8217;s father runs a retail business. In June this year, the boy failed his school examinations, got a mouthful from his parents and decided to run away to his maternal uncle. The uncle lived in Hyderabad, India.
Dinesh only got as far as Amritsar district. Now he8217;s in Faridkot.
Between two governments, why can8217;t they just send him home?
