Fauzia Ansari, the 62-year-old mother of Indian national Hamid Nehal Ansari, who was arrested by ISI after he crossed over to Pakistan from Afghanistan to save his lady love, has appealed to the Pakistan government to release his son. She has argued that he has already spent nearly six years in prison, though such a crime attracts a maximum of three-year jail term as per the law of that country.
Sometime in 2010, Hamid, who was then 24 years old and was pursuing an MBA programme in Mumbai, came across a Pakistani girl on Facebook and fell in love with her. Two years later, he decided to go to the neighbouring country to bring her to India when he learnt that she was being forcibly married off to someone else. But he failed to get a Pak visa and took the route through Afghanistan to sneak into Pakistan.
In November 2012, less than 10 days after seeing off his parents in Mumbai, Hamid was arrested by Pakistani intelligence officials from Kohat in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where he had reached illegally via Afghanistan.
However, it was only in September 2014, nearly two years after he was detained, that the Pakistani agencies accepted that he was arrested by the ISI on 12 November 2012. Hamid was branded as an Indian spy and sentenced to three years’ imprisonment by a Pakistani military court in December 2015.
“Last time I spoke to him was in 2012. For nearly two years, we were not even aware where he was. The only mistake that he committed as a young man was to fall in love and act impulsively. For six years, I am waiting to see my son,” Fauzia told The Sunday Guardian.
“I request the Pakistani government to release him in this holy month of Ramzan. They should consider the fact that he has done no wrong to them and he has already spent more than two years in illegal confinement as he had been sentenced for only three years,” she added.
Hamid’s father, a bank officer, took voluntary retirement from service to focus on efforts to secure his son’s release. Hamid’s brother is a practising dentist.
According to Fauzia, she has met External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj more than five times. “She always gives us a sympathetic and patient hearing. She understands the plight of a mother, and has told us that she is trying very hard for Hamid’s release. But it is up to the Pakistani authorities. I have approached them, too, in India but their hands are tied,” she said.
India had made at least 52 requests till last year for consular access to Hamid but did not receive any response from the Pakistani government. Fauzia said that she was being helped by a Pakistani woman journalist and a senior Pakistani lawyer who had filed the habeas corpus in a Pakistani court on her behalf, seeking Hamid’s whereabouts.
The Lahore-based Pakistani journalist, Zeenat Shehzadi, 26, was kidnapped in August 2015 while she was helping Fauzia in her son’s case, to be “recovered” only in October last year.
Earlier this week, Hamid filed a petition in the Peshawar High Court, requesting that he be shifted to Peshawar Central Prison.
He is currently in solitary confinement at Mardan Central Prison in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
According to the statement of Hamid’s lawyer in the court, the Pakistani officials had stated that despite being eligible for remission of his punishment, he was not entitled for release since he was a citizen of India, an enemy country, and, hence, he was to be treated as an “anti-state entity”.