KARACHI: Shahnawaz Baloch, 28, is finally content to be home. After spending two years in an Indian prison, he sits inside his home in Daryabad, near Niazi Chowk, in Lyari, surrounded by his parents and close relatives.

His mother and two of his sisters were at home, speaking on his behalf from time to time.

There’s a happy banter going on about how he made it back home. And a few serious conversations about not sending him back to the sea again. Speaking about the amount of time Shahnawaz spent in prison, his mother argued that compared to him, his father, who used to be a fisherman, was back home within three months after he was held in an Indian prison.

“That was Ayub Khan’s era,” says his father, Mohammad Malang, squatting near the main doorway. “Fishermen were let off within three months at the time, unlike how it is done today.”

‘There is nothing around the area which can indicate one has reached the border’

Arrested near what is an ill-defined sea border between India and Pakistan near Thatta, Shahnawaz says: “There is nothing around the area which can indicate one has reached the border. I was arrested, with 16 other fishermen, in 2012. The only indication was the incessant sound of a whistle by the approaching coast guards from the Indian side of the border. By then it was too late to do anything.”

The boat, Al Khair, had a few “maintenance issues” the day they were arrested. So, what followed was that the coast guards pulled the boat towards the Indian side and from there the fishermen were transferred to the police headquarters in Gujarat.

Narrating the experience, he says: “The officers, just wanting to confirm our profession, and not getting the language right, nodded their head to ask ‘machhi?’, and we nodded ‘yes’. We were asked to speak out our names, which we did. Mine was written incorrectly as Anwar, which I came to know later, as they refused to let me go in March this year, when 16 of my colleagues made it back home.”

Explaining his experience inside prison, he says: “I met a lot of fishermen from Pakistan. Some of them cried while narrating how they landed there. I must add that nobody misbehaved with us, or hit us. But the sheer uncertainty of the situation, along with the apprehension that I may never be able to see my family again, kept me awake all night.”

He was kept in the police headquarters for six months and was eventually sent for one and a half years to, what Shahnawaz describes as, “a small home, to be kept under house arrest, while my documents were being verified by the officials in Delhi and Lahore”.

When Shahnawaz was held in India, a police officer came to meet his father to inquire about the case and verify Shahnawaz’s real name and profession. A few days later, a member from the Fisherman Cooperative Society (FCS) also came to meet the parents and, from that day onwards, the family started receiving Rs3,000 every month for two years as ‘kharcha-paani’.

Even after making it back home, and being quickly taken away from the railway platform at the Cantt Station by the members of the FCS, Shahnawaz says he was later handed Rs3,000 “as a compensation for his time in prison”.

As a profession, fishing is similar to gambling, one of Shahnawaz’s aunts adds. Before being arrested, Shahnawaz either earned a lot within a span of six months or nothing at all, thus making their financial situation unstable. Speaking about it, he adds: “I know I won’t get back my boat. But I won’t change my profession. There’s nothing else I know but fishing.”

Mohammad Saeed Baloch, a spokesperson for the Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum (PFF), says that until the status of the Sir Creek is decided upon both by India and Pakistan, fishermen will continue to suffer. The Sir Creek, a water conduit separating Pakistan’s Sindh province from the Indian state of Gujarat, is a disputed territory between two countries with fishermen mostly becoming bait in the conflict of settling scores. Saeed adds: “Both countries almost reached a decision during former president Pervez Musharraf’s era. But after Musharraf’s government went, the issue once again took a backseat.”

Explaining further, he says: “The continuing arrests violate the UN convention on the law of the sea signed by both countries. But I think getting them to value the convention would be easier than wishing them to become friends. And till that happens, a perpetual discontent is guaranteed for the fishermen.”

Published in Dawn, December 9th, 2014