LAHORE: Indian spy Hamid Nehal Ansari was repatriated to his country on Tuesday a day after he served out his jail term in Pakistan.

Mumbai-based Ansari, 33, was handed over to Indian authorities by Pakistani officials at Wagah border where his mother Fauzia and father Nehal received him along with other close family members.

Many India-Pakistan friendship activists were also present on the Indian side to welcome his repatriation, said an official.

He was set free by officials of the Mardan central jail on Tuesday at 7:30am a day after the Foreign Office announced that he would be released on completion of his three-year imprisonment. The jail officials told Dawn that he was taken to Lahore soon after being released from the prison in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Later, the security officials handed him over to the Indian officials through the Wagah border.

The official said the Indian spy was arrested by Pakistani agencies in 2012 when he crossed the border from Afghanistan before being tried in a military court. On December 15, 2015, the court awarded him three-year imprisonment on charges of spying for India.

At that time, the Indian media had run headlines with some conflicting reports of its government officials claiming that the young man had crossed the border to meet a girl he had met online.

The official said the Pakistan’s law enforcement agencies seized from his possession fake documents that he had obtained to show he was a Pakistani national. However, on questioning by the Pakistan law enforcement agencies, the suspect failed to give reasonable justification for crossing the border, prompting them to further interrogate him.Earlier on Monday, Foreign Office spokesperson Dr Mohammad Faisal had announced that the Indian spy, who had illegally entered Pakistan and was involved in anti-state crimes and forging documents, was being released upon completion of his sentence and was being repatriated to India.

Published in Dawn, December 19th, 2018