The Indian mission in Pakistan has approached the Islamabad High Court seeking the release of four Indian prisoners who were convicted by military courts and have served their sentences.
The court petition, which was filed in the high court by Aparna Ray, the Indian mission’s first secretary, through three Pakistani defenders, identified the prisoners as Birju Dung Dung, Vigyan Kumar, Satish Bhog and Sonu Singh and said they were currently detained in jails in Lahore and Karachi.
All the prisoners have served the sentences handed down by the Pakistani army general field courts martial: Dung in 2007, Singh in 2012, Kumar in 2014 and Bhog in 2015, according to the petition.
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The petition, which named Pakistan’s foreign and interior secretaries as defendants, said that the prisoners were arrested by the Pakistani military and charged under the Pakistan Army Law and the Official Secrets Law. In addition, he said that the prisoners had alleged that they had not committed any crime and that “the entire process started from the arrest to the completion of the final sentence is an abuse of the legal process.”
The petition also noted that the Pakistani Constitution states that no person “shall be deprived of life or liberty in accordance with the law” and asked the high court to facilitate the release of prisoners.
The Indian mission noted in the petition that it had formally written to the Pakistani Foreign Ministry on May 18 to remind the authorities that the issue of the release of these four prisoners had been addressed through 31 notes verbales or unsigned diplomatic correspondence between October 2019 and May 2020. The communication said that the nationality of the prisoners had also been confirmed.
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“The esteemed ministry is requested that these four confirmed Indian prisoners be kindly released and repatriated as soon as possible,” the communication said.
India and Pakistan currently have hundreds of each other in their jails, most of them fishermen arrested for crossing the maritime border. Work to identify and release these prisoners through a joint judicial commission has been affected by turbulent bilateral relations in recent years.
In addition to exchanging prisoner lists twice a year, the two sides have been unable to make progress on proposed measures to accelerate the release and repatriation of prisoners.
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