NEWS DELHI, Jan 10: Nearly seven months after arresting Iftikhar Gilani on charges of spying for Pakistan, the Indian government on Friday decided to drop the case against the Kashmiri journalist, citing lack of evidence and compulsions of public interest, his lawyer said.

“The public prosecutor appealed to the court to withdraw the case keeping in view the circumstances, evidence on record and the public interest,” Gilani’s lawyer V.K Ohri told Dawn.

He said the government should pay damages to Gilani’s family for the unfair length of time he was pointlessly kept in jail.

Ohri said conviction under the Official Secrets Act would have got Gilani 14 years in prison had he been convicted.

Gilani’s arrest and the incarceration of Kumar Badal, a reporter for the now-defunct Tehelka.com website, over charges of poaching wild animals had triggered fears among the media of an arriving assault by the Hindu nationalist government on journalists.

Badal remains in jail over charges of poaching a leopard for an expose he was apparently planning to stage. Badal denies the charges.

Gilani has been under arrest since June 2002 for allegedly possessing sensitive documents relating to troop deployment in Jammu and Kashmir.

The latest move of the government comes as a surprise as the home ministry had last week opposed Gilani’s discharge plea and questioned the opinion of Director-General of Military Intelligence (DGMI) O.S. Lochab who said there was nothing sensitive about the documents found with the journalist.

Star News, reporting from Gilani’s residence in New Delhi, said his family could scarcely believe that their nightmare was finally ending.

The Centre’s admission came after sustained pressure from human rights groups and fellow journalists who argued that the government’s charges against Gilani had been trumped up.

For the government, truth dawned when the military intelligence confirmed that the documents found on Gilani’s computer were not classified and were freely available on the Internet.

Ironically Gilani, who is also the son-in-law of Kashmir’s pro-Pakistan leader Syed Shah Gilani, is an accredited journalist whose papers were cleared by the same home ministry that booked him under the Official Secrets Act.

And if the army had not testified in his defence, Iftikhar Gilani could have spent quite a few years in prison for a crime he did not commit.