NEW DELHI, Oct 7: India has expressed concern over increasing cases of deaths of Indian prisoners in Pakistani jails and has also objected to the United States Ambassador in Pakistan visiting “Pakistan-0ccupied-Kashmir” and repeatedly referring the region as “Azad Jammu and Kashmir” (AJK).
According to the external affairs ministry, six Indian prisoners, who completed their jail terms, died in Pakistan in the last nine months and India has raised the “alarming” issue with Islamabad, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said on Friday.
MEA spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said on Friday that five of the six Indians who died in Pak jails lately were fishermen and asserted that Pakistan was “duty-bound” to ensure safety and security of all Indian prisoners. “Six Indians, five of them fishermen, died in Pakistani custody in the last nine months or so,” he said.
“All the six, interestingly, had completed their sentences, but what we would say, were illegally detained by Pakistan despite completing their sentences and in spite of multiple demands by the Indian side for their release and repatriation,” Mr Bagchi added. The spokesperson said there has been an increasing number of deaths of Indian fishermen in Pakistan in recent times.
Bagchi said India had protested to the US over a visit to Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) by the American ambassador in Islamabad, whose repeated references to the region as “Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK)” did not go down well in New Delhi.
Donald Blome, the US ambassador to Pakistan, made a three-day visit to PoK beginning October 2 to promote the bilateral partnership and highlight people-to-people ties, according to a statement from the US embassy in Islamabad. The statement referred to the region as AJK.
“Our objection to the visit and meetings in Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir by the US ambassador to Pakistan has been conveyed to the US side,” Bagchi told a weekly news briefing without giving details.
Official sources said the Indian side was irked by several references to AJK by the US side, including by the ambassador. The Indian position is that the region is under illegal occupation by Pakistan. India has criticised other such visits to PoK from the US side. In April, New Delhi described US Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s visit to PoK as “condemnable” and accused her of violating the country’s sovereignty by travelling to a region illegally occupied by Pakistan.
During his visit, Blome met “AJK prime minister” Tanveer Ilyas and academic, business, cultural and civil society representatives. While in Muzaffarabad, he visited the Quaid-e-Azam Memorial Dak Bungalow and said in a tweet: “The Quaid-e-Azam Memorial Dak Bungalow symbolizes the cultural and historical richness of Pakistan and was famously visited by [Muhammad Ali] Jinnah in 1944. I’m honored to visit during my first trip to AJK.”
(Manas Dasgupta)