KARACHI: The family of Noor-ul-Amin, the fisherman said to have died in an Indian prison, wants to know more. Hamida Khatoon, his widow, said on Wednesday that they were informed by the Fishermen Cooperative Society (FCS) on Tuesday that her husband who had been arrested at sea two years ago was no more. “But my children and I need to know what happened to him,” she said.

Speaking in Ibrahim Hyderi, she said that they had been hearing conflicting news and did not know what to do. “We are going crazy. We don’t know whom to believe, whom to listen to,” she said, adding that they had four children of whom three were daughters, who were married and the son was unmarried. She said that they lived in a rented quarters in extreme poverty and two years ago her aged husband had to go on a fishing expedition to feed his family.

Sharing her late husband’s photograph, she said that after being arrested for mistakenly crossing over to India in 2017, she also received two phone calls from him. “When he called, he said to me that he was going through a very difficult time in Indian jail and that the jail staff was ill treating him,” she said.

“When I was informed by the FCS that my husband was no more I was taken to a police station to put my thumb impression on some documents there. But I still need to know for sure that the person who died in India was in fact my husband Noor-ul-Amin,” she said, adding that even after her husband’s getting arrested no one from the government had come forward to offer the family any kind of help.

“I ask the government now to please find out what happened and if they can confirm the news, please see to it that his remains are brought back to his family so that we can bury him here,” she said.

Published in Dawn, March 28th, 2019