June 11, 2008	Wednesday	Jamadi-us-Sani 06, 1429

KARACHI, June 10: The eight-member Pakistan-India Judicial Committee on Prisoners visited two jails in the city and talked to Indian prisoners regarding their welfare on Tuesday, it has been reliably learnt.

The committee comprises four retired judges of the superior courts from each country. The Indian members, who arrived here on Monday, would leave for Islamabad today. They would visit another jail in Rawalpindi and move to Lahore for meeting Indian prisoners in some jails of Lahore. On Saturday, the delegates would complete their week-long visit and return to Delhi.

Sources said that Indian prisoners, who had been kept in jails in different parts of the country, had been shifted to Rawalpindi and Lahore prisons so that the delegates did not have to travel to numerous places to meet the prisoners.

The committee first visited the Youthful Offenders’ Industrial School, better known as Juvenile Jail, and met 34 young Indian fishermen.

Later they visited the central prison next door, where they met four prisoners. After talking to them, the delegates said that only two of them were Indians.

Responding to Dawn queries, Juvenile jail Superintendent Yunus Masih said that the committee members asked the boys if they had any problems or if they were being discriminated against by the jail staff or the Pakistani inmates. He said the inmates told the delegates that they had no complaints against the jail authorities.

However, he said they requested the delegates to arrange for their release soon as they missed their homes very much.

IG Prisons Yamin Khan told Dawn that the committee members would visit the Malir district jail on Wednesday morning to meet over 450 Indian fishermen languishing there. Later in the evening they would fly to Islamabad on their second leg of the tour.

The committee delegation comprised retired justices Nagendra Rai, Amarjeet Chaudhry, A. S. Gill and M. A. Khan from the Indian side and Abdul Qadeer Chaudhry, Fazal Karim, Nasir Aslam Zahid and Mian Mohammad Ajmal from the Pakistani side. Four officials of the Indian High Commission at Islamabad and two representatives of the federal interior and foreign ministries of Pakistan also accompanied them.

Sources said that the committee would issue an official statement only after visiting the prisons in Rawalpindi and Lahore.

A member of the committee, retired Justice Nasir Aslam Zahid, told Dawn that after completion of the delegation’s visit the Pakistani members of the committee would visit India to meet Pakistanis being kept in its various jails.

He said the Indian government would be requested to bring the Pakistani prisoners to a few centrally-located prisons so that committee members avoid extensive travelling.

The government of Pakistan claimed that there were over 500 Pakistanis in Indian jails while Indian authorities put the figure as 250. He said an exact number of Pakistanis in Indian prisons was not clear.

The judge said it had been learnt that a large number of prisoners had completed their sentences but they had been languishing in the prisons because the prisoners were denied timely access to the counsellor. However, he said, efforts were being made to bring the prisoners kept in each other’s prisons back home.

The maximum number of Pakistani prisoners is expected to be languishing in Jodhpur (Rajasthan) and Amritsar (Indian Punjab) jails as most Pakistanis travel through Samjhota Express and Thar Express from Lahore and Karachi to reach Delhi and Munabao, respectively.