In a move evidently aimed at breaking the ice with India, Pakistan has decided to “unilaterally” release 100 Indian fishermen in its custody on Thursday.
Officials at the Indian High Commission said they had yet to receive the names of the 100 who are to be released.
They should have been confirmed by the Indian government as its nationals, and should have the necessary travel documents, before they can be repatriated.
An Indian official said that unless the Pakistani government provided a list of names of those who were to be released, it was not possible to say if all them had been confirmed as Indian nationals and could be repatriated. “Once we have the names, we will work with [the Pakistan government] to see they are repatriated,” the official said.
In a release, the office of Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani said he had decided to “unilaterally” release the fishermen as “a humanitarian gesture.” The release said Mr. Gilani had “instructed the Interior Ministry to make necessary arrangements for their repatriation to India on December 24, 2009.”
The decision is clearly an overture to New Delhi for the resumption of talks stalled since the Mumbai attacks. The issue of prisoners is one of the subjects in the composite dialogue process that India has said it will not resume unless Pakistan takes credible steps against the perpetrators of the Mumbai attacks.
The release said Pakistan had also proposed to India the revival of the judicial committee that was set up in 2008 to resolve the issue of prisoners and fishermen in each other’s custody. The committee, made up of retired judges from both sides, visited jails and made recommendations for the improvement in the conditions of Indian and Pakistani prisoners languishing in each other’s prisons, and for their early release and repatriation.
But after the initial set of visits and lengthy recommendations from the committee, its work appears to have suffered a setback as with other India-Pakistan issues following the Mumbai attacks.
The prisoners issue also came up in the Sindh High Court in Karachi on Tuesday, which held the first hearing in a case of nine juvenile Indian fishermen who have completed their sentence but have not yet been released.
The Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child, a Pakistani non-government organisation, had written to the Sindh chief justice Sarmad Jala Osmani about these under-18 prisoners. The chief justice took suo moto notice of the issue by turning the letter into a petition.
