Search for missing soldiers still not over for Indian team
Nirupama Subramanian
It pins its hopes on a meeting with President Musharraf
Team to visit four more prisons
Search must be broadened to include more jails
ISLAMABAD: Despite a futile search of six prisons across Pakistan, 14 Indians representing the families of 54 soldiers and airmen missing in action in the 1971 war arrived in the capital even more convinced than before that their loved ones are in this country.
While they have four more prisons to cover till June 14, when their tour will end, they are pinning their hopes not on those visits but on a meeting with President Pervez Musharraf, a request for which they have made. "We are eagerly looking forward to our meeting with President Musharraf, and we hope he will meet us," said Damyanthi Tambay, whose husband Flight Lieutenant Vijay Tambay's Sukhoi was shot down over Pakistan within two days of the war starting on December 3.
As proof of his capture, Ms. Tambay has a crumbling, yellowing copy of the Dhaka newspaper, Sunday Pakistan Observer of December 5, 1971, which carried a Rawalpindi-datelined report that "Flt Lt. Tambay" was among five Indian pilots taken alive by Pakistani forces.
Flt. Lt. Tambay and 53 other servicemen reported captured by the Pakistani forces did not return home with the 650 prisoners of war Islamabad repatriated after the 1972 Shimla accord.
Pakistan denial
Pakistan has denied it is holding any more Indian prisoners of war. Earlier this year, President Musharraf made the grand gesture of inviting the families to visit Pakistan and see for themselves if their kin were in prisons in the country.
The 14-member group arrived on June 1, insisting that it was not looking for PoWs. It wanted to explore the possibility that the missing men were being held under some other category.
The group has so far visited the Kot Lakhpat jail in Lahore, the Karachi central jail, and the jails in Sukkur, Hyderabad, Multan and Faisalabad, but in vain.
According to Inderjit Kaur, who is looking for her father Major S.P.S. Waraich, early in the tour the delegation realised that its search would be incomplete unless the visit was broadened to include more jails, military prisons and even mental asylums. The delegation also realised that it was unlikely that the 54 men were included in jail records of civilian prisoners.
"We want to appeal to President Musharraf for a thorough re-investigation of each individual case," said Rajesh Kaura, brother of Captain Ravinder Kaura, whose name was announced in the list of captured prisoners on Lahore Radio on December 7, 1971.
Kamlesh Jain, who is looking for her husband Squadron Leader M.K. Jain, said the International Red Cross must be involved in a new investigation for the missing Indians, while G.S Gill, whose elder brother H.S. Gill's MiG-21 was shot down over Badin in Pakistan on December 15, 1971, said both the Indian and Pakistan Governments must conduct a coordinated search.
Armed with evidence
"It has to be a transparent, open investigation and the involvement of the families in this is essential," he said, adding that over the time, each family had collected leads that could help narrow down the search. The group is armed with several pieces of evidence indicating that the men were taken alive by Pakistani forces, and their presence in various jails.
One such evidence is a photograph in Time magazine of December 27, 1971, captioned "Indian prisoner behind bars." According to the delegation, the man in the photograph is Major A.K. Ghosh, one of the 54 missing in action, and it has a real photograph of the Major to prove its contention.
Another piece of evidence is a letter from Major Ashok Suri to his father, R.K. Suri written in 1975, saying 20 Indian officers were being held in Karachi and calling for efforts for his release.
"When I showed the letter to the DIG Prisons in Karachi, he asked, where does this say they were being held in the Central jail? And we told him, that is exactly what we are saying, that they could have been held anywhere, in a house, in a detention centre," said his brother Bharat Suri, president of the Missing Defence Personnel Relatives Association.
Nirmal Kaur, wife of Subedar Asa Singh, even has the number of a military interrogation centre - FIU226 - in Multan Cantonment, where she said her husband was held. She got this information from Bhogal Ram, an Indian "security prisoner," or an alleged spy, who was repatriated in 2002. He told her that he met her husband in 1991 and 1992.
Jasbir Kaur, wife of Major Kanwaljeet Singh Sandhu, is carrying a letter written in Gurmukhi by her husband to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1980, in which he asked her to make efforts for the release of 35 Indian defence personnel. Ms. Kaur mysteriously received a copy of this letter around the same time.
Then, there is BBC correspondent Victoria Schofield's book "Bhutto; Trial and Execution," in which she says that during his incarceration in the Kot Lakhpat jail before his 1979 execution, he was in a cell next to a barrack with Indian prisoners from the 1971 war.
Last week, the Pakistan Foreign Ministry said the Government "went out of its way" to invite the delegation "to provide relief and closure" to the families of the missing men.
On Sunday, Mr. Gill said closure was not what the families of the missing men were looking for. "We are looking for answers, for the truth about these men".
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