Convicted Indian national seeks shifting to prison room from death cell

PESHAWAR: A convicted Indian national has sought his shifting to the Central Prison Peshawar’s hospital or to an ordinary room from the death cell at the Peshawar Central Prison.A military court on November 14, 2015 awarded three years rigorous imprisonment to Indian national Hamid Nehal Ansari for entering Pakistan on fake documents. 

The prison authorities have confined him to a vacant death cell as a most protected prisoner.Some days ago, the Indian national moved a petition in the Peshawar High Court (PHC) through his lawyer Qazi Muhammad Anwar requesting the court to order his shifting from the death cell to the side-room of the jail hospital or be lodged with two or three prisoners in a wider space if available.

Hamid Nehal Ansari requested the court to direct the prison authorities to extend the benefit of Section 382-B of the Code of Criminal Procedure to him from November 15, 2012 when he was taken into custody until his conviction. This includes the period he had spent in confinement, interrogation and investigation by the army.

He requested that directive be issued to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to facilitate the visit of his mother, Fauzia Ansari to Peshawar so that she could see him at the prison.He asked the court to direct the Kohat Police to hand over his passport and other articles he had in his possession at the time of arrest.

About the ordeal of the convict, the petition stated that the petitioner was the holder of the Indian passport issued in Mumbai on July 7, 2011 and valid till July 6, 2021.It said Hamid Nehal Ansari left India for Afghanistan on November 11, 2012 on a valid tour visa.

According to the travel schedule he was supposed to return on November 15, 2012 and it transpired from his emails that he left Jalalabad for Peshawar on November 12, 2012.It said that he succeeded to enter Pakistan using a fake identity card carrying the name of Hamza sent to him by his Facebook friends from Karak district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa with whom he stayed for two days.

The petition said that on November 14, 2012 his host in Karak left him at a hotel in Kohat. It said that from the hotel as per the police report the personnel of an intelligence agency took him into custody before he went missing.

It said that Fauzia Ansari then filed a habeas corpus petition for safe recovery of her son in the PHC that was disposed of when the Ministry of Defence informed the court that he was in the custody of the army.