Karachi: The India-Pakistan accord on the resumption of talks between them has led to considerable relief among the peace activists in both countries. But once again they are not being allowed to sustain their hopes of a fruitful understanding between their two nations. There is considerable speculation as to who persuaded Narendra Modi to change course and Nawaz Sharif to respond with unusual alacrity. It has been noted that both Pakistan and India have tried to accommodate each other’s point of view — Pakistan by agreeing to discuss terrorism in Bangkok and India by agreeing to talks in an enlarged format in Islamabad. Not everybody, however, is happy. An Indian expert says the compromise has benefited Pakistan while a Pakistani expert says his country has lost much. Such analyses are likely to poison the minds of people on both sides.
While the two sides will address the issues dividing them in due course there is an urgent need to ease the plight of individuals who have been caught in the crossfire. They include fisherfolk and persons detained in the other country’s prisons. And there are victims of confrontation and hatred at the levels of officials and citizens — such as Hamid Ansari of India and Zeenat Shahzadi of Pakistan. Hamid was picked up by security agencies from a hotel in Kohat on November 14, 2012 and has been missing since. The 28-year old IT engineer and MBA from Mumbai was known for his desire to promote education and peace and had discussed with Rotary friends in Afghanistan and Pakistan plans to open an education centre for professional courses.
He had some online friends in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Fata, especially a girl from the tribal area. She had been given away in marriage under a jirga decision on a tribal feud. Hamid decided to help her. Unable to get a visa for Pakistan, Hamid managed to arrive in Kabul, ostensibly for an interview for a job . He somehow arrived in Pakistan around November 12, 2012 and stayed with one of his online friends, till another friend got him lodgings in a hotel in Kohat. From there, a police officer took him away on November 14, 2012 and handed him over to an officer of a security agency. Attempts to register an FIR for his arrest and detention failed till the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappea-rances ordered the registration of one in 2014. At the same time, a habeas corpus petition was moved in the Peshawar High Court.
At the time of his arrest, the only charge that could be brought against him was that he had illegally entered Pakistan. The maximum punishment for that offence is six months and Hamid’s detention period has already exceeded three years. If the police had found a missile or a couple of IEDs in his travel bag he might have been booked for espionage, sabotage, terrorism and what not. But there is no evidence of Hamid’s being accused of any such offence. Three years is a long time to solve a well-documented case of enforced disappearance that is also on the roster of the Peshawar high court. We may now move to another case of involuntary disappearance, that of Zeenat Shahzadi, described in the record as a journalist from Lahore.
How and why did Zeenat get interested in the Hamid Ansari case is not known but she succeeded in securing in August 2013 a special power of attorney from Hamid’s mother, Fauzia Ansari. She pursued Hamid’s case in the court and the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances both. She was to appear before the commission on August 24, 2015, but before that she was picked up from a bus stand near her house in Lahore on August 19, 2015. A few days earlier too she had been held by the police for a short while after she had met the Indian high commissioner at a public event.
Zeenat’s brother got an FIR registered and the matter was also raised before the commission which asked the Punjab home secretary to set up a joint investigation team (JIT) to trace Zeenat. The commission has held several hearings. It has also recorded the evidence of a rickshaw driver who had seen Zeenat being taken away by a couple of men in a white car. The process of normalisation of relations between India and Pakistan will be greatly strengthened if the cases of individuals in distress are expeditiously and justly settled, the work of the joint committee on prisoners in one another’s jails is revived, and the recently raised barriers to people’s travel across the border are demolished.
By arrangement with Dawn
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