POW issue: Pak. invites Indian families to visit jails

By B. Muralidhar Reddy

ISLAMABAD, SEPT. 6. Pakistan is willing to allow Indian families, who believe their kith and kin are lodged in various Pakistani jails as 1971 POWs, to travel to any part of the country to check for themselves the veracity of the truth.

An official statement by the Pakistan Foreign Office on Wednesday had declared that the military government had come to the conclusion after thorough investigations that there were no Indian Prisoners of War (PoWs) in any of the Pakistani jails or prisons.

The Ministries of Interior and Defence had investigated the matter on the direction of the Pakistani military ruler and President, Gen. Pervez Musharraf. This was one of the issues raised by the Prime Minister, Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee, at the Agra Summit and Gen. Musharraf had promised to personally look into the matter.

After the Pakistan Government came to the conclusion that there are no Indian PoWs in any of the Pakistani jails, Gen. Musharraf instructed his officials to invite any of the interested relatives of the so-called 54 Indian PoWs to visit the Pakistani jails to satisfy themselves about official claims that no missing soldier of 1971 Indo-Pak war languished in its prisons.

Gen. Musharraf's Press Secretary and Defence Spokesman, Maj. Gen. Rashid Qureshi, said the family members who wanted to visit Pakistan could approach the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi and obtain necessary travel documents. He said that Gen. Musharraf had asked the foreign ministry officials to facilitate the visit of family members of the PoWs to visit Pakistan.

The issue of missing Indian soldiers of the 1971 war has been a bone of contention between India and Pakistan for several years. While India has continued to maintain that there are 54 PoWs lodged in different jails of Pakistan, Islamabad has denied the charge. According to a Pakistani human rights activist, Mr. Ansar Burney, foreign prisoners were housed in about 77 jails located across Pakistan. Last month, he said his organisation, Burney Welfare Trust, had begun its own investigations into the allegations and promised to come out with details in about two months.

A report in the local English daily, Dawn, said that the Interior Ministry apprised the Cabinet about its efforts to verify the charge of presence of PoWs in jails and found no evidence to substantiate it. The Cabinet was informed that pictures of the PoWs, which were provided by the Indian Government, were also circulated to all the prisons in the country.

The Cabinet has also been informed that all the intelligence agencies, including the Inter-Services Intelligence, (ISI) had been involved in the combing of country's prisons to locate the Indian PoWs, it said.

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Section  : International
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