Indian prisoner back home after 35 years on Pakistan death row
WAGAH, India (AFP) — An Indian man, freed by Pakistan after languishing on death row for suspected espionage for 35 years, was given a hero's welcome when he returned home, witnesses and officials said Tuesday.
Kashmir Singh, 61, waved to Pakistani journalists and well-wishers before walking across the border crossing between rivals India and Pakistan at Wagah in northern Punjab state to be greeted by his family and relatives.
"It is a new birth for me after being released from the Pakistani jail," Singh -- dressed in a white shirt and camel-coloured trousers -- told reporters at the border post before crossing to the Indian side, where his wife and children were waiting.
"The credit of my release entirely goes to (Pakistan Human Rights Minister) Ansar Burney who during his visit in the jail spotted me, put up my case before the Pakistani Government and procured my release.
"For me Ansar Burney is an angel. I have not enough words to thank Burney," Singh said.
As she waited at Wagah to see her husband, Singh's emotional wife Paramjit Kaur told reporters: "I am very, very happy to see this day.
"When we spoke last night (Monday), he told me he was just waiting to come back home."
An excited group of well-wishers garlanded Singh and showered him with rose petals as he met his family briefly before being taken away by India's paramilitary Border Security Force and intelligence agencies for a "debriefing," reports said.
Afterwards his family was set to take back to his home village in Punjab's Hoshiarpur district.
"Yes, I was accused of espionage and smuggling. But I did not do anything of that sort and they found nothing on me when they arrested me," Singh told reporters after his release on Monday in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore, where he was being held.
Singh was arrested in the garrison city of Rawalpindi in 1973 at the age of 26 and sentenced to death by a military court.
But he became lost in the system as he was held under the Official Secrets Act, said Burney who discovered Singh in jail following a tip-off this year.
Referring to his prison stay, Singh said he spent his time "in dingy and isolated cell in the various Pakistani jails ... where daylight was distant dream for me.
"I was made cut off with rest of world," he told reporters.
Burney said the prisoner had become "mentally disabled" after spending three and a half decades without ever seeing the sky or receiving a single visitor.
Musharraf expressed "shock and disbelief" when informed about the case and accepted a mercy petition before issuing orders for Singh's release and repatriation, said the minister, who also runs his own rights trust.
Nuclear-armed Pakistan and India have fought three wars since their independence in 1947 but launched a slow-moving peace process in 2004.
They have recently held a series of prisoner exchanges, mainly of fishermen who were detained after straying into each others' territorial waters.
