KARACHI: Seven Indian fishermen, including three cousins, were released from the Malir district prison here on Thursday after they had served out their sentences.
Khema Kala, 44, Shivdas Khema, 40, and Manu Bhagwan, 35, had earlier complained while speaking to Dawn at the time of the release of 55 other Indian fishermen on the occasion of their Independence Day last year that they did not know why their release was always overlooked even though others having spent far less time than them were getting released. Later, the prison authorities had mentioned that there was some issue about confirmation of their nationalities from authorities in New Delhi.
On Thursday, the three men wore broad smiles. They were finally going home to their wives and children in Gujarat, India. “We are leaving our boat, Yashoda Maiyya, behind. It was confiscated at the time of our arrest at sea almost two years back. But it was a small boat with room only for three people. It is not as big a loss as suffered by the others here who have lost bigger boats,” said the eldest among them, Khema Kala.
Asked if he had thought of changing professions after being locked up for crossing the border unknowingly so easily, Khema Kala said: “I know it can happen again any time, but there is nothing else I know that can help me earn a decent living back home. I am a fisherman and will remain so.”
Lala Pansa, another fisherman who is only 20, said that he did not spend much time in prison but each minute of that time was spent missing his wife and two sons back home. Asked if his wife missed him, too, he smiled shyly and did not answer that instead he said: “My younger son is only one-year-old. But the older one, Zeus, is three. He misses me very much and keeps asking his mother when I would return.”
Another 20-year-old, Bharat Dheeru, said that he was aboard the fishing trawler named Arun Kuppa, also in 2011. “There were six of us. The other five were released earlier but for some reason my turn just didn’t come. My mother sent so many letters to me asking when I would come back home and I wrote back telling her that I didn’t know,” he shared.
On boarding the wagon arranged by the Ansar Burney Trust to take the fishermen to Lahore from where they would be handed over to the Indian authorities at the Wagah border crossing on Friday morning, Bharat Dheeru said that he had often wondered what Pakistan would be like. “Your country is better than what I thought it would be like, and I have only seen the prison, where I was treated very well. So it must be even nicer outside,” he smiled.
The other two released on Thursday were 32-year-old Mansingh Bhagwan and 30-year-old Govind Punja Bamaniya.
Meanwhile, a jail officer in plain clothes and dark glasses stood by listening intently to what the fishermen had to say. Someone mentioned that he was one of the men on duty when an Indian fisherman escaped from the same prison two weeks ago.
Asked if he was friends with the one who escaped like the other prison officials are with all the Indian fishermen as they call them victims of circumstances and not real criminals, the man snapped, “I am the only victim of circumstances here, okay? That rascal had hardly been here for 10 days before escaping and while chasing him I ran into thorny bushes. One thorn went straight into my left eye and I’m almost blind in that eye now. So don’t talk to me about friends and victims of circumstances!”