YESTERDAY’S paper carried an appalling report on the killing of an elderly Pakistani fisherman in an Indian prison. Like hundreds before him, the octogenarian had crossed into Indian territory unknowingly in a boat with six others in 2017. In times like these, with the war drums beating and emotions running high in both countries, authorities have to be even more vigilant about prisoners’ safety — particularly in India, which seems to have been caught in a war frenzy in recent weeks. This is especially the case after Indian prisoners stoned to death 50-year-old Shakirullah, a Pakistani inmate serving a life sentence in a jail in Rajasthan, and who had accidentally crossed the Sialkot border in 2003. Authorities said an argument had broken out between Shakirullah and the Indian prisoners after the attack on Indian soldiers in Pulwama, for which the authorities in Delhi held Pakistan responsible. When his remains were returned 12 days after his killing, a postmortem revealed that vital organs were missing from his body.

What is most shocking about the latest incident is that it was not the prisoners but the jail authorities themselves who apparently carried out the brutal assault on the helpless old man. Fishermen are already one of the poorest and most vulnerable groups in this region. In Pakistan, many belong to the Burmese and Bengali communities, and may not even have basic citizenship status. They have nothing to do with the decisions made by those in power, and they cannot be expected to see an invisible border in the sea when they are out making an honest livelihood. Earlier this year, India handed a list of 347 Pakistani prisoners languishing in Indian jails to the Pakistani high commission, as a reciprocal gesture to Pakistan’s handing over of a list of 537 Indian prisoners to the Indian high commission. Out of the 537, 483 were fishermen. For the sake of basic human decency, if nothing else, all fishermen should be released immediately, especially if their safety in captivity cannot be guaranteed.

Published in Dawn, March 28th, 2019