From Pakistan with tears of joy

By Gaurav Vivek Bhatnagar

NEW DELHI, APRIL 14. It was a homecoming he always dreamt of but never hoped would materialise. So when Roop Lal finally stepped on to Indian soil at Indira Gandhi International Airport here this afternoon after 26 years behind bars in Pakistan, he could not hold back his tears of joy.

Emerging from the terminal on a wheelchair after being debriefed by officials of the External Affairs Ministry and the Research and Analysis Wing, Roop Lal looked extremely cheerful. Sporting a cream shirt-suit, he flashed a `V' sign with his left hand. A garland of red-and-white roses round his neck, his face shone with a radiance which was there to behold.

Unruffled by all the jostling all around him - caused by the now routine skirmishes between mediapersons and security personnel - Roop Lal said: ``I am very happy. I just cannot believe that I have returned home.''

As his 26-year-old daughter Sunita, who was just six months old when Roop Lal was arrested by the Pakistani authorities in November 1974, kept pushing the wheelchair out of the crowded Visitors' Lounge, Roop Lal said he owed his freedom today to his daughter and son-in-law, Dr. Krishan Chawla. ``I was sure that my daughter, would be alive. When I had almost given up hope she managed to locate me.''

It was at the Delhi airport only that he got the opportunity to meet his ``new family'' for the first time - daughter Sunita, her husband and their six-month-old daughter Vritika who, he said, reminded him of Sunita when he last saw her.

Holding Vritika in his arms, Roop Lal - who is suffering from partial paralysis - said this was ``the start of a new life'' for him. Roop Lal, who was arrested on charges of ``espionage and possession of secret documents'' on the Pakistan side of the border, vehemently denied he was a spy. ``When at Gurdaspur, I happened to stray onto their side,'' he said.

In Pakistan, he said, he underwent a lot of physical and mental torture. ``I was kept in Lahore, Sialkot and Multan jails. I was often asked by them to convert to Islam. But I told them I am a Hindu and I will remain one.'' Asserting that what was important was ``ibadat'' - prayers - he said that even in the absence of any images of Hindu deities he continued to worship them.

Roop Lal said he had given up all hope of living after he was sentenced to death in 1977. However, he received a new lease of life in 1997 when the then Pakistan Army Chief, General Jehangir Karamat commuted his death sentence to life.

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