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| July 26, 2005 | Tuesday | Jumadi-us-Sani 18, 1426 |
Man abducted by India narrates ordeal
DARRA SHER KHAN (AJK), July 25: Sitting apparently unperturbed on a charpoy in the courtyard of his mud-house, 65-year-old Qazi Faqir Hussain of this Poonch district village recalls with a mixed feeling of fear and disbelief his abduction by Indian troops, first incident of its kind after the November 2003 ceasefire along the Line of Control. “When I saw them ascending towards my house, I panicked fearing they would kill all of us,” he said of last Monday’s intrusion by Indian troops into AJK territory.
The farmer, sporting white beard, was dragged across the line, which is hardly 200 yards away from his house, by around 40 Indian army personnel at about 11:30am. “They were at least 40, including one lieutenant-colonel and two majors,” he told this correspondent with over a dozen villagers hearing his account.
Mr Hussain’s younger brother and his wife fled from the house as they noticed the unfamiliar faces ascending towards them. But his daughter and a niece did not leave and instead pelted stones on the soldiers from the rear portion of the house, he said.
“The lieutenant-colonel grabbed me by the collar and dragged me inside the house to check if someone, ostensibly any militant, had been sheltered there. But they found nothing but my handicapped brother reciting Holy Quran,” he said.
He said the colonel took his brother’s rosary bead, touched it with his lips and then put it back on the Holy Book, saying to him: “Carry on what you are doing.” Immediately afterwards, Mr Hussain said, he was hauled towards the dividing line.
The villagers told this correspondent that most of them witnessed the episode helplessly from their scattered houses. Around 100 yards away from Mr Hussain’s house flows a stream, which has its source in held Kashmir. There, he said, he refused to move ahead and resultantly was smacked twice.
“The colonel promised that he won’t slap me again but failed to keep his word as we crossed the LoC ... When I reminded him of his promise, he offered apology,” Mr Hussain said, adding: “However there was no repeat of that treatment afterwards.”
At an army post across the LoC, the Indians offered him tea and later also brought “daal and some chapattis of reduced size” in lunch, which he ate out of hunger, he recalled.
The menu was unchanged at night. His captors also provided him some oil to rub on his body to keep mosquitoes away and later tied his hands and legs with a bed sheet. Meanwhile, an official complaint with India had been lodged by the Pakistan army over the intrusion and his abduction.
“The following morning, I was taken to an army camp in Mendhar, where I was forced to state before some people that I had accidentally crossed the LoC,” he said.
It was the time when the Indian deputy high commissioner was summoned to the Foreign Office in Islamabad, where strong protest was lodged with him with a demand that the man be returned immediately. Mr Hussain said that after being served lunch in the camp he was brought in the vehicle of same colonel to the LoC, where a flag meeting between the army officials from the two sides ended his ordeal after almost 30 hours.
The Indians also gifted him a new qameez shalwar, two boxes of sweets and an axe, said Mr Hussain, who believed that he had returned from the jaws of death. Mr Hussain’s wife, one son and a cousin fell victim to Indian shelling before the ceasefire and their graves are situated near his house surrounded by maize fields.
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