Indian team visits Karachi jails

An eight-member Pakistan-India Judicial Committee on Prisoners has visited two jails in this southern port city to enquire about the welfare of Indian prisoners lodged there.

The committee, comprising four retired high court judges of each country, on Tuesday first visited the Youthful Offenders' Industrial School, better known as the Juvenile Jail, and met 34 young Indian fishermen, Dawn reported on Wednesday.

They later visited the adjoining central jail where they met four prisoners.

"After talking to them, the delegates said that only two of them were Indians," Dawn reported on Wednesday.

The delegation comprises retired judges Nagendra Rai, Amarjeet Chaudhry, AS Gill and MA Khan from the Indian side and Abdul Qadeer Chaudhry, Fazal Karim, Nasir Aslam Zahid and Mian Mohammad Ajmal from the Pakistani side.

Four officials of the Indian High Commission at Islamabad and two representatives of the Pakistan's interior and foreign ministries also accompanied them.

The delegation, which arrived in Karachi on Monday, left for Islamabad on Wednesday. After meeting prisoners jailed in Rawalpindi and Lahore, the Indian delegates will leave for home on Saturday.

Committee member Nasir Aslam Zahid told Dawn that the Pakistani members of the delegation would soon visit India to meet Pakistanis lodged in its jails.

Sources said that Indian prisoners, who had been kept in jails in different parts of the country, had been shifted to Rawalpindi and Lahore prisons so that the delegates did not have to travel to numerous places to meet the prisoners.

According to Juvenile Jail Superintendent Yunus Masih, the delegation members asked the boys if they had any problems or if the jail staff or the Pakistani inmates were discriminating against them.

He said the inmates told the delegates that they had no complaints against the jail authorities, adding they had also urged their early release.

The delegation would issue an official statement on the completion of its tour, Dawn said.