India-Pakistan tensions trap families in debt, poverty-Jailed for fishing

On March 17, India’s Ministry of External Affairs revealed that out of 194 Indian fishermen currently imprisoned in Pakistan, 123 are from Gujarat. According to the Indian government, it has 81 Pakistani fishermen in its custody. Families on both sides say their loved ones have been jailed for a crime they committed “unknowingly” – because they did not know they had ventured inside waters claimed by another country. 

Pakistan has released 200  indian fishermen .Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum General Secretary Saeed Baloch said that in the first batch there are 198 fishermen going home. “The first batch has 198 fishermen, the second will have 200 and the third about 100,” he said.Two fishermen diedin prison due to illness

Pakistan released Mauji Nathubhai Bamaniya, 55, in February because his osteoporosis had gotten worse. “I still can’t believe that I am sitting in my house, in my country, with my family. My decaying bones brought me back to my homeland,” Bamaniya tells Al Jazeera in Vanakbar village.

 In February, Pakistan released 22 Indian fishermen who had been imprisoned by Pakistan’s Maritime Security Agency between April 2021 and December 2022, while they were fishing off the coast of Gujarat – also the home state of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Three of those released are from Diu, 18 from Gujarat, and the remaining one person from the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.

Several years and rounds of diplomatic talks between India and Pakistan have not been able to resolve the dispute, which has even seen military tensions between them. In 1999, India shot down a Pakistani aircraft carrying 16 naval officers over the alleged violation of Indian airspace near their maritime border. The incident occurred just a month after the two countries fought a war in Kargil, a snowy district in Indian-administered Kashmir.

Boxes of sweets are being passed around as cheers and joy surround Rajeshwari Rama’s brick house, insulated with tin sheets, in the Vanakbara village of Diu, a federally-controlled island along the India-Pakistan coastline near Gujarat state in western India.

Rama’s relatives and friends are talking at the top of their voices as they celebrate the release of her husband, fisherman Mahesh Rama, from the Landhi jail in neighbouring Pakistan’s largest city of Karachi, in February this year.

Among the attendees is Laxmiben Solanki, 36, standing quietly in one corner. She does not taste the sweets. She is only marking her presence there, but remains preoccupied with thoughts of her husband, Premji Solanki.

Premji, 40, has also been in Pakistan’s Landhi jail since December 2022, along with several other Indian fishermen. Their crime: crossing a disputed border in the Arabian Sea, which divides the South Asian nuclear powers and sworn enemies, for fishing.

Though India and Pakistan share a heavily militarised land border, their International Maritime Boundary Line in the Arabian Sea is also largely disputed, especially in a zone called Sir Creek, a 96km (60-mile) tidal estuary that separates India’s Gujarat and Pakistan’s Sindh provinces.

It is in this patch that fishermen from both India and Pakistan wander into deeper waters, often without realising they have entered foreign territory. Due to the terrain of the disputed territory, there is no border fencing, with a marshland acting as a natural boundary between the two nations.