A phone call, a visa to Pakistan, a meeting with her son Hamid Ansari in the Peshawar jail, and his release. In order of chronology, that’s college lecturer Fauzia Ansari’s wishlist. But for the moment, all she is hoping for is a chance to meet Pakistan’s Foreign Affairs Adviser Sartaj Aziz when he lands in Amritsar to attend the Heart of Asia conference.
Ms. Ansari has travelled by train with her husband, Nehal Ahmad Ansari, from Mumbai, just in case Mr. Aziz agrees.
“Eventually, we are all humans first,” she says of her hopes that Mr. Aziz will help Hamid, who was convicted of espionage in 2015 and sentenced to three years of imprisonment.
At the time, the 31-year-old management graduate had told his friends and family that he had fallen in love with a girl in Pakistan’s Khyber Pukhtunkhwa over the Internet, and against everyone’s advice, travelled there to try and rescue her from a forced marriage.
The next the Ansaris heard was that he had been arrested by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and kept in military custody as a dreaded spy until he was brought to trial.
View of the law
As he has already spent four years in prison as an undertrial, the Ansaris say he could be released under Pakistani law, which allows for a suspension of sentence in lieu of the time served.
“When one door closes, a window will open,” Ms. Ansari says recounting how matters made some progress after External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj met them in August, and they were given an appointment at the High Commission. “An officer of the High Commission met them and their mercy petition has been sent to Pakistan,” a Pakistani official told The Hindu .
