New Delhi: The recovery of a Pakistani woman journalist who was allegedly kidnapped while pursuing the case of an Indian engineer two years ago has now brought the focus back on the case of Indian national Hamid Ansari who is languishing in jail on charges of espionage and ‘anti-state activities’.
Ansari, a former teacher of Mumbai Management College, is now lodged in the Mardan Central Prison.
Zeenat Shahzadi was believed to have 'forcibly disappeared' while working on the case of Ansari. Ansari went missing in November 2012.
In February, 2016, according to Dawn, Ansari who had gone missing from Kohat in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan over three years ago, was sentenced to three years imprisonment for espionage by a court martial.
Dawn reported that Ansari had recently filed a writ petition in Punjab High Court, seeking remission in his prison term. According to the prison record, his imprisonment of three years is being counted from Dec 15, 2015, the day of his conviction.
A source told the Dawn that the convict had confessed to illegally entering Pakistan from Afghanistan for espionage. The source added that Ansari had seven Facebook accounts as well as around 30 email addresses. He was reportedly found to be in possession of sensitive documents.
Ansari has denied the allegations of his involvement in anti-state activities and had claimed that he had befriended on the facebook and became close to a Pakistani girl. They claimed that he had reached Kohat in an attempt to save this Facebook friend from forced marriage by her family.
He has stated that he had left India for Afghanistan on Nov 4, 2012 on a valid tourist visa. He left Jalalabad for Peshawar on Nov 12, 2012 and entered Pakistan with a fake identity card in the name of Hamza sent to him by one of his Facebook friends from Karak, with whom he stayed in Karak for two days. He added that on Nov 14, 2012, his friend left him at a hotel in Kohat following which he was arrested and taken away by officials of an intelligence agency.
For over three years, Ansari could not be traced and later his mother filed a habeas corpus petition in the high court, which was disposed of on Jan 13, 2016, when it was informed through a written reply by the ministry of defence that Ansari was in military’s custody and being tried by court martial.
Later, a writ petition was filed on behalf of Ansari seeking different reliefs, including fair treatment and protection in the prison and relief under Section 382-B of the Code of Criminal Procedure. That petition was disposed of on Nov 1, 2016, by the high court with the observation that providing him benefit of section 382-B CrPC was between the prison and military authorities.
According to Dawn, Zeenat Shahzadi, was declared her attorney by Ansari’s mother. She was seen relentlessly pursing the case of Ansari before the Peshawar High Court as well as the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances.
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