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Pak prisoners desperate to return home
Fifteen-year-old Umer Shehzad crossed over from Pakistan in August 2008 in a hope to meet Shah Rukh Khan, his favourite Bollywood actor, reports Vijaita Singh.
Fifteen-year-old Umer Shehzad crossed over from Pakistan in August 2008 in a hope to meet Shah Rukh Khan, his favourite Bollywood actor.
He was caught at Wagah border and sent to the detention center at Lampur in northwest Delhi two days later.
“Everyday they tell me I will be sent home in a day or two,” Shehzad, a resident of Lahore in Pakistan, who has been at the deportation home for more than a year, told HT. “My father underwent a bypass surgery after that. I want to go home.”
There are 17 others at the detention centre who have completed their jail sentences and are waiting to go home.
HT spoke to all the detainees who said they were desperate to get home but were not getting any help.
The ones who escaped
The three Pakistani ISI agents — Abdul Razzak, Mohammad Sadiq alias Aslam and Rafaqat Ali — who escaped on Friday on the pretext of visiting an eye centre were “desperate” to return home too.
“They (the three absconding Pakistanis) were not ready to wait anymore. They had seen people languishing at this centre for more than four years,” said Rizwanul Haq (42) who was arrested with the trio on charges of possessing explosives in October 2000.
“They were desperate to return. Had we known they were planning such an escape we would have discouraged them. They might be picked by security agencies and killed.”
For the past two days, the Pakistani detainees have had to undergo a headcount twice in the day. “Just like it used to be in Tihar Jail,” said Ikrar Hussain, a resident of Gujarat in Pakistan who was arrested on August 24, 2008 on charges of illegally entering the country.
Delhi police in turn claimed the process to deport them was on. “Process with the host country has already been initiated by the government, reply from the host country is awaited,” said Rajan Bhagat, spokesman, Delhi Police.
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