The Pakistan government on Monday gave the Indian High Commission in Islamabad a list of 457 Indian prisoners held in the country and said that it would release 146 Indian fishermen on January 8.
This, the Foreign Office said, “is consistent with the provisions of the Consular Access Agreement between Pakistan and India, signed on 21 May 2008”. The pact mandates the two countries to exchange twice a year lists of prisoners in each other’s custody.
India also provided the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi with a list of Pakistani prisoners held in Indian prisons, the Foreign Office said.
Pakistan had released 145 Indian fishermen on December 28, Dawn reported.
The Ministry of External Affairs on Monday said it was awaiting consular access to those Indian nationals in Pakistan’s custody, including Kulbhushan Jadhav and Hamid Nehal Ansari, PTI reported.
Kulbhushan Jadhav case
The matter of consular access has come to the fore in the past few months as Pakistan refused to grant India consular access to former Navy officer Kulbhushan Jadhav, who was arrested from Pakistan’s Balochistan province in March 2016, and sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court on charges of espionage and terrorism in April 2017. Islamabad had earlier said that Jadhav’s meeting with his wife and mother on December 25 was humanitarian meeting and consular access had not been granted.
Mumbai’s Ansari had reportedly tried to enter Pakistan illegally from Afghanistan in 2012 to meet a girl he had befriended online. He was later arrested and the Pakistani military court had pronounced him guilty of espionage.
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