PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court on Thursday sought comments from the superintendent of Mardan Central Prison on the plea of an Indian national, Hamid Nehal Ansari, seeking his removal from solitary confinement in the jail, where he has been serving the sentence of three-year imprisonment awarded to him by the Field General Court Martial in Dec 2015 for espionage and involvement in anti-state activities.

A bench consisting of Chief Justice Yahya Afridi and Justice Syed Afsar Shah directed the prison’s superintendent to explain the position after the petitioner’s counsel, Qazi Mohammad Anwar, contended that Indian nationality could not be a legal argument for keeping a prisoner in solitary confinement.

Mr Ansari had filed a petition last year seeking remission in his three –year prison term.

Ansari serving three-year jail term after being convicted of espionage

With the main petition pending with the court, the Indian national has filed the instant application for his removal from solitary confinement and shifting back to the Peshawar Central Prison.

Qazi Mohammad Anwar, lawyer for the petitioner, said his client had earlier filed another application seeking his transfer to the Peshawar prison.

He added that on Apr 26, a reply of the superintendent of Mardan prison was filed by the law officer.

The lawyer said that reply carried a strange analogy for refusing ordinary remission to his client i.e. being a citizen of India, an enemy country, he was to be treated as anti-state and therefore, he was not entitled to any special or ordinary remission.

He said the question whether petitioner was entitled to ordinary remission was to be decided by the high court but that might come on record that being Indian citizen could not be advanced as the legal ground for keeping his client in solitary confinement and treating him as anti-state prisoner.

The lawyer said solitary confinement was a punishment and no prisoner could be kept like that unless the prison authorities issued such orders for an offence committed on the premises.

Deputy attorney general Mussaratullah Khan appeared for the federal government in the case.

Earlier this year, the defence ministry had filed comments in the main petition and had claimed that the petitioner was convicted by the Field General Court Martial on the charges of espionage and anti-state activities and therefore, he was not entitled to any remission.

The petitioner had challenged the mention of the words ‘anti-state activities’ in his jail warrants, saying he was neither involved in any anti state activities nor was he convicted by the military court for that offence.

He prayed the court that an appropriate order be issued to the defence secretary to amend the jail warrant and substitute the word ‘anti-state activities’ with ‘illegal activities’.

The petitioner, a 31-year-old MBA degree holder, was a teacher at the Mumbai Management College.He’d entered Pakistan in Nov 2012 carrying a fake identity card sent by his Facebook friends from Karak with whom he stayed in their town for two days. He was taken into custody from a Kohat hotel on Nov 14, 2012.

Published in Dawn, May 18th, 2018