Tit for tat damaging Pak-India ties
Posted by Javed Iqbal Belharvi
WHILE the assault on the life of Indian spy Sarabjit Singh by the inmates in Lahore’s Kot Lakhpat jail was being lamented in Pakistan, the gruesome murder of a Pakistani prisoner, Sanaullah Haq languishing in Indian Occupied Jammu jail, by a former Indian soldier in the jail, has seriously challenged the so-called tall claims of the Indian leadership towards promoting the theme of ‘aman-ki-asha’ between the two neighboring countries.
Sarabjit Singh was accorded state funeral duly attended by Indian political leadership including Congress Vice President Rahul Ghandhi.
Not only this, Sarabjit Singh was given a financial assistance of one crore Indian rupees for the family. Declaring Sarabjit Singh as a national martyr, Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh and the Chief Minister of Indian Punjab, Mr Parkash Singh Badal, criticized Pakistan over the security arrangements made in jail, ignoring security lapses in their own jails. The political leaders prophesied that the death of Sarabjit Singh will cast negative aspersions on the already stalled Indo-Pakistan composite dialogue process.
The Indian Interior Minister Salman Khurshid said publicly that the death of Sarabjit Singh has the potential of hurting people-to-people ties between India and Pakistan. It was sad to see that Indian media portrayed Sarabjit as a hero while he was a declared and convicted terrorist. This initiated a debate, as many people are asking questions about Singh’s “contributions” to his country India as a hero or as a perpetrator of terrorism. In all fairness, the Indian state appeared to have “over-reacted” over the death of Indian prisoner Sarabjit Singh in Pakistan.
Sarabjit Singh, born in Bhikhiwind in Tarn Taran district of India on the border with Pakistan, was recruited by RAW, which trained him and sent him on dry runs to Pakistan before he was tasked to detonate bombs in Lahore and Faisalabad. It is open secret that Sarabjit Singh was used to avenge Pakistan’s alleged support to the Sikh’s Khalistan movement in Indian Punjab.
According to a highly placed source in the Pakistan’s Intelligence agencies, the explosives were packed in ghee tins and smuggled to Pakistan. He was caught by the security forces of Pakistan and tried by Lahore High Court/Supreme Court of Pakistan and sentenced to death in 1991. Confessing his acts of terrorism in front of the courts and media, he accepted that he was assigned the mission of undertakings terrorists’ acts in Pakistan to create instability and lawlessness by Indian RAW operatives. Owing to the nature of his offence (terrorism), the President of Pakistan even rejected his mercy petitions.
While comparing the treatment of India’s Sarabjit Singh with that of Kashmir’s Mohammad Afzal Guru, it was known that on February 9, 2013, India secretly hanged Afzal Guru who was convicted by the Indian Supreme Court in connection with his alleged involvement in the attack on the Indian Parliament in 2001. Guru’s family was not even informed about his execution at Tihar jail – infringing all standards of fundamental human rights, jail instruction manual, and principal values. Not only this, the Indian home ministry did not concede to the genuine demand of the family to have Guru’s body flown to Kashmir for a ceremonial burial as per their respective religious rituals.
On the other hand, Pakistan government dealt the Sarabjit Singh case with open-mindedness and proceeded in a very cooperative manner in the post-death crises. Not only had Pakistan previously allowed Singh’s sister, Kaur, to visit her jailed brother several times, the country also made adequate arrangements to hand over Singh’s body to India after his death. Following the attack, he was given the best medical treatment in Jinnah Hospital, Lahore, but he could not survive and died on May 2, 2013. His family was allowed to meet him in the hospital and they remained with him until his death. While paying homage to Sarabjit Singh and express sympathy with his family, one will have to give answers to Afzal Guru’s family and to the people of Jammu and Kashmir as to how Afzal Guru was a terrorist?”
There is no doubt that attack on Sarabjit Singh by inmate prisoners is a condemnable incident, but the Indian response by killing Sanaullah Haq is a more a reprehensible act. Soon after the attack on Sarabjit Singh, Indian media, keeping in character, started a heinous campaign against Pakistan. The “friendship bus was interrupted to proceed that ply commuters across the borders. The security experts say that the tit-for-tat assault is visibly the handiwork of Indian intelligence to take revenge of the assault on Sarabjit Singh. Sanaullah Haq, arrested in 1990 for inadvertently crossing the border into India, was convicted under Terrorism & Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act.
He was unjustly sentenced to life in prison in 2009 for being a Pakistani militant operating in Indian Held Kashmir. During the jail, Sanaullah was hit by an retired India soldier inmate. He received serious head injuries and was first rushed to the government medical college hospital in Jammu, where doctors said he had slipped into a ‘deep coma’, much like Sarabjit.
However, sad incidents like Sarabjit’s and Sanaullah’s death must not derail the peace process between Pakistan and India. Better sense must prevail. There is no use to take vengeance on the prisoners nor is it rational approach to create hype in the media quarters to such heights as in the case of India blitz.
The Government of Pakistan expressed deep concern over the attack and called upon Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh “to look into this grave issue personally and ensure that a thorough “international investigation” be conducted into the heinous crime so that actual perpetrators are brought to justice”.
These two incidents (brutal attack on inmates of other countries) call for serious deliberations on whether they could have been avoided. It is also pertinent to question why undue media hype was created. This raises questions as what exactly prompted Sarabjit’s murderers and Sanaullah’s attackers to take “law” into their own hands. One important step to stop future such like incidents is to ensure separation of prisoners from the two countries in jails. This policy should have been there from the very beginning, given the difficult India-Pakistan ties.
There are 500-600 Indian prisoners including fishermen are in Pakistani jails and around 272 Pakistani prisoners in Indian jails. The role played by the media over Sarabjit’s murder and the attack on Sanaullah bears its own significance.
There is a view that the media went berserk in giving excessive coverage to Sarabjit Singh case. Let us acknowledge the fact that the emotionally loaded statements of Indian politicians screened on the TV channels made the difference in messing up the things.(Khalid Khokhar)
