Anaemic Madhya Pradesh teenager languishing in Pakistani jail as MEA dawdles on verifying Indian nationality

In August 2013, Pakistani newspaper Frontier Post reported that Pakistani Rangers at Cheta Chowk arrested a teenage boy. He did not have travel documents, and had crossed over into Pakistan accidentally. He identified himself as Jitendar Arjunwar, belonging to a village in Madhya Pradesh.

Arjunwar was presented before the Additional District and Sessions Court in Umerkot, where he was sentenced to a year-long imprisonment. However, the conviction expired on 14 July, 2014, and subsequently he was given consular access in January 2015.

Three years on, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) has not managed to verify his Indian nationality, without which he cannot be repatriated. As a result, Arjunwar is still languishing in a Pakistan jail despite having completed his sentence.

Mumbai-based journalist Jatin Desai, secretary of the Pakistan-India Peoples’ Forum for Peace and Democracy (PIPFPD), is following up the case with the MEA. Desai said he has written a letter to External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on 5 March, 2018**,** flagging the situation.

The ministry, responding to a query under the Right to Information Act, confirmed on 21 March that the confirmation of Arjunwar’s nationality is awaited. “Why should it take three years to confirm somebody’s nationality in today’s day and age?” Desai asked. “We have been demanding that it needs to happen within three months of consular access. But the problem is there is no time limit for such confirmations, which results in delays”.

Worse, Arjunwar has been diagnosed with sickle cell anaemia, and has to be taken to civil hospital several times for blood transfusions. Lawyer Haya Zahid, part of the Committee for the Welfare of Prisoners (a committee established by the Home Department of the Government of Sindh), met Arjunwar in Malir prison in Karachi, which is overflowing with inmates with “under-equipped and understaffed” medical ward.

Writing a piece for Aman Ki Asha on her visit, Zahid noted Arjunwar “stood out as far more young and pale in comparison to the rest”.

“Each time, his life perilously hung by a thread but he has miraculously managed to survive this way for over three years,” she wrote. “He was barely able to respond to my queries and was unable to bear the weight of his own feeble stature. The jail officials have had no option but to situate him as a stateless permanent fixture in the medical ward, forgotten and secluded, until the next time he has to be rushed to the civil hospital in the prison’s lone ambulance”.

However, back home in Barghat village, Seoni district, Madhya Pradesh, Arjunwar’s family only knows he has a problem with blood. “He used to be sickly even at home”, said his mother Parwati.

Arjunwar, studied till Class 5, comes from an impoverished family. His father, who used to run a snack stall, committed suicide some years ago. The responsibility of running the household fell on Arjunwar and his brother Bharat, who works as a mechanic. “He would leave home in search of work and come back in some days,” said Parwati. “This time too, we thought he’d come back. It’s been four years since we last heard from him”.

Parwati said she was asleep when Arjunwar left. Some of the reports in 2013, however, said he allegedly left after a quarrel with his mother, and crossed the border near Khokhrapar.

According to a report in India Today , Arjunwar told the Pakistan police that he kept wandering “here and there”, and “after nearly a month, he reached a place where he found barbed wires and thought that the wires had been placed to stop livestock in the area. He dug out soil beneath the wires and continued his journey”.

Parwati is uneducated. Local journalist Neeraj Mishra helped the family draft letters for the chief minister, collector, superintendent of police as well as the president. “We did not receive a single promising response”, said Mishra.

On 4 April, Tarun Nayak, Superintendent of Police of Seoni, said the necessary details would be sent to the MEA by evening. “We have confirmed his nationality from our side,” he said, refusing to divulge exactly when the MEA contacted him for details on Arjunwar.

Desai said the procedure is laced with bureaucratic insensitivity. “Indian high commission writes to Ministry of External Affairs, which writes to Ministry of Home Affairs, which follows up with concerned state secretaries, who then contact the police”, he said. “Often, when the husband is caught, wife moves to her parents with her kids for survival. When the police lands at the address for verification, the house is locked”.

In January, The Indian Express reported on a villager, Ismail Sama, from Kutch in Gujarat, who went missing in 2008, and was traced to a Pakistani jail. His sentence ended in October 2016, and the only reason Ismail is not back home is because his nationality has not been verified. The Express report quoted his wife, Kamabai, saying she learnt her husband is alive when one of the prisoners released in October 2017 told her he was with Ismail in Karachi prison. But the Government of India apparently had his information for four years.

A questionnaire has been mailed to MEA spokesperson Raveesh Kumar, along with an SMS. In a telephonic conversation, Kumar said he has forwarded the email to the concerned department. The piece will be updated if and when the response is received.