Date:26/04/2007 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2007/04/26/stories/2007042605531400.htm

International - India & World

Pakistani father's plea to Manmohan, Musharraf

Nirupama Subramanian

To help him get back his son who left for India in 1991

While Mohammed Shabbir is a Pakistan national, son Ishtiaq is not recognised as one

Family says since 2006, Ishtiaq is being held in a Visakhapatnam jail

ISLAMABAD: The father of a 38-year-old man who left his home secretly in 1991, showed up in India and is now in custody there appealed on Wednesday to Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to restore his son back to him.

But the twist in the tale is that the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi does not recognise Ishtiaq Shabbir, who is in a Visakhapatnam jail, as a Pakistan national, even though Mohammed Shabbir, the 60-year-old father, has all the papers to show that he is.

Without passport

Mr. Shabbir said he does not know how his son Ishtiaq travelled to India or if he went with a travel document. Ishtiaq was 22 years old then. He did not take his passport or even his national identity card when he left his home in village Kala Gujran in the Jhelum district of Punjab province.

Shows recent photo

Mr. Shabbir showed both to reporters here with a recent photograph of his son. "When he disappeared, we looked everywhere for him and gave up after a couple of years. The first time we heard from him was in 1998, when he wrote a letter to us. At that time he was in a Delhi jail, and there was a case going on against him," said Ishtiaq's uncle Khalid Mansoor.

Both Mr. Mansoor and Mr. Shabbir said they did not know the details of the case. They said Ishtiaq wrote that he had left home for India to meet his mother's relatives in Hyderabad. He was also married by then to a Hyderabad cousin, Zubeida Khatoon, and had two children.

Release ordered twice?

According to them, at least twice, the courts ordered his release — it is not clear by which courts — but the police rearrested him on some other charge. Since 2006, Ishtiaq is being held in Visakhapatnam, his father and uncle said. Their information is that he is in "Visakhapatnam Police 2".

"His wife called a few days ago, and she told us that he is there," Mr. Mansoor said.

But on April 11, the family read in the Urdu newspaper Khabrein that the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi had rejected that Ishtiaq was a Pakistan national.

Efforts in vain

They said they had approached the Pakistan Foreign Ministry and Interior Ministry for help in bringing him back to India, but Mr. Mansoor said their efforts had been in vain.

"We want him back, and we want to bring his wife and children too, and we appeal to the President of Pakistan and to the Prime Minister of India to help us," Mr. Mansoor said.