An Indian national, Hamid Nehal Ansari, who had gone missing from Kohat over three years ago, has been sentenced to three years imprisonment for espionage by a court martial.
According to officials, Mr Ansari was convicted two days ago in Kohat and was shifted to Peshawar Central Prison. He has a right to appeal under the Pakistan Army Act.
Sources said that the convict had confessed to illegally entering Pakistan from Afghanistan for espionage. The source added that Mr Ansari had seven Facebook accounts as well as around 30 email addresses. He was reportedly found to be in possession of sensitive documents.
Last month, the defence ministry had informed the Peshawar High Court that Mr Ansari was in the custody of Pakistan Army and was being tried by court martial. In light of the information, a two-member bench had on Jan 13 disposed of a habeas corpus petition filed by Ms Fauzia Ansari, the convict’s mother, against his alleged illegal detention.
“Agencies working under the administrative control of this ministry: ISI and MI, GHQ, were asked to provide requisite information. In response, Military Intelligence Directorate, GHQ, intimated that Hamid Nehal Ansari is in military custody and is being tried by court martial,” read the written response of a deputy director (legal) of the ministry to the court’s query.
The convict was taken into custody by police and Intelligence Bureau (IB) officials in Kohat in Nov 2012. Ever since, his whereabouts were unknown.
Mr Ansari, a 31-year-old MBA degree holder, was a teacher at the Mumbai Management College. His mother claimed he was in touch with some Pakistani friends who had suggested him to cross into Pakistan from Afghanistan without a visa. She claimed that he had become friends with a Pakistani woman through social media and had gone to Pakistan to meet her.
Ms Ansari had earlier sent an application to the Supreme Court’s human rights cell which forwarded the case to the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances. The commission had on April 10, 2014, directed the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa home department to constitute a joint investigation team to trace the whereabouts of Mr Ansari. It had also ordered the Provincial Police Officer to register an FIR about his disappearance.
For over three years, Fauzia Ansari had been desperately trying to trace her son who went missing in Pakistan while searching for a girl he fell in love with over the Internet. On Thursday, this Mumbai school teacher woke up to the news that her son was in the custody of the Pakistani army.
By evening, she had confirmed the news through her lawyer in Pakistan: the Lahore High Court had been informed that Nehal Hamid Ansari faced a court-martial on unspecified charges. As night fell, it was still not clear why the management graduate was being court-martialled, but a tearful Fauzia finally said, “At least, he is alive.”
As Indian officials confirmed in Delhi that they would “be seeking information and consular access from Pakistan in the next few days”, Fauzia sat at the dining table of their rented fourth-floor apartment in Versova, staring vacantly at the neatly labelled files and folders with documents and photos of her son.Then, flipping through one of those folders, she said, “It’s been over three years… now there is some closure. Even if he is in military custody, we know he has done nothing wrong and hope he gets a favourable sentence.” Ansari, then 27, left home on November 5, 2012, claiming he was headed to Afghanistan in search of a job. But his family later came to know from officials and associates that he was in love with a woman from the Kohat region of western Pakistan, and had decided to cross over to prevent her marriage with another man. According to police, Ansari was allegedly convinced by friends and contacts in Pakistan that he could enter the country easily from Afghanistan. Indian High Commission officials in Pakistan believed he had been arrested by local officials for entering the country illegally. On Thursday, the Dawn website reported that Pakistan’s deputy attorney general Mussaratullah Khan had informed court that “the defence ministry had informed him that the missing man… was in the army’s custody and was being court-martialled”. “The bench later disposed of the habeas corpus petition filed by the detainee’s mother, Fauzia Ansari, observing that the petition had become infructuous…” the report stated. Fauzia and her husband Hamid, a lawyer, said they are now trying to obtain more information on their son’s case — Ansari’s brother is a doctor. Asked about her son’s disappearance, Fauzia said, “We last spoke to him on November 10, 2012, when he told us that he would be returning soon as the visit to Afghanistan was not fruitful. However, after November 15, when his phone was not reachable, we lodged a complaint at the Versova police station. I then saw his emails and Facebook pages. The last email was sent to a girl identified as ‘Saba’, stating that he was with Attubhai. When I went through his Facebook pages I learnt about his friendship with a few Pakistani nationals. The police probe revealed that the email was sent from Pakistan. This confirmed that my son’s last location was in Pakistan. I tried calling his Facebook friends but they never spoke to us.” Fauzia said she filed the writ of Habeas Corpus in April 2014 with help “from Abdul Rauf Rohilla, district governor of the Pakistan Rotary Club Midtown”. “I also got in touch with a Pakistan-based journalist who travelled to the area from where my son had gone missing. She spoke to the people who he had befriended over Facebook. She also met the father of the woman for whom my son travelled to Pakistan. The father told her that his daughter was married to another person but refused to share her contact details,” she said. Fauzia added that she also suspected “a conspiracy” surrounding her son’s case, claiming that the journalist’s family had informed her that she had been missing since last August. The Ansaris said they now hope the government would pursue the case with Pakistan. “I would be able to see my son in flesh and blood,” said Hamid. Breaking down, Fauzia added, “At least give us a visa to travel to Pakistan to see our son. We have applied for a visa more than 20 times but we don’t even know if they even processed our requests.” Hamid and Fauzia said their son’s case has taken a severe toll on their lives — and not just in the Rs 20 lakh they’ve spent so far on “fees to Pakistani lawyers and the numerous rounds made to Delhi”. “Once while on the road, reading a message related to the case on my phone, I got knocked by a car and had to undergo surgery. Now, I have a rod fixed in my ankle. We have suffered a lot in the last three years and our only wish is that we see our son once more,” said Fauzia.
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