No angle of the Khalil Chishty episode provides a pretty view. The octogenarian Pakistani was recently convicted in a 1992 murder case and handed down a life sentence by a trial court in Ajmer. Two weeks ago, the Rajasthan High Court turned down his plea for suspension of the sentence. For the nearly 20 years the case took to be decided, Dr. Chishty — a highly-qualified virologist — was out on bail, but remained hostage to the shockingly slow pace of the proceedings. His passport impounded, he could not return to his country. The case in which he was one of four accused related to a group clash in Ajmer that resulted in one person succumbing to a gunshot injury. Dr. Chishty, on a visit to Ajmer from Karachi, was present when the clash took place, apparently between two sets of his relatives. The trial court was evidently not impressed with his claim that he was only an onlooker and played no part in the violence. Independent of the merits of the case, it defies comprehension that a sessions court should have taken 19 long years to decide the matter. This is glacial speed even by the standards of the Indian judiciary. Even less comprehensible is the Rajasthan High Court's observation while turning down Dr. Chishty's plea for suspension of the sentence that “no leniency” could be shown to him as he was a Pakistani national, even as it granted identical appeals by the three others convicted in the case. Dr. Chishty, who is unable to walk unaided, began his sentence at the end of January this year; he is warded in the Ajmer jail hospital. While the courts may have decided to make an example of Dr. Chishty, awarding an old, infirm and ailing Pakistani, a life sentence after a delay of two decades is hardly a shining example of the Indian judiciary at work.
Dr. Chishty's saga stands out all the more in the light of the generosity of spirit Pakistan demonstrated by releasing Gopal Dass, an Indian citizen who had been incarcerated for 27 years, on an appeal from the Supreme Court of India. The recent thaw in relations has also seen Pakistan and India release a number of each other's nationals from jail. The two governments have decided to speed up the release of other prisoners. It seems to have finally dawned on the two sides that prisoners — mostly arrested for minor offences such as overstaying their visa or crossing the border — must not be used for settling scores between the two countries. In keeping with this, it would only be right for the Indian government to respond positively to the appeals for the release of Dr. Chishty by his family and human rights activists in both countries. He should be allowed to return to Pakistan and to his family immediately.
