The family members of Indian "prisoners of war (PoWs)", who reportedly went missing during 1971 war, have sought permission from the Pakistan government to visit Attock jail in search of their near and dear ones on the basis of what they claimed sufficient evidence.
Indians are visiting Pakistan in search of their relatives. They first visited Karachi jail where they did not find any one of them. Addressing a press conference here on Tuesday, they said they visited Pakistan with best hopes and that they wanted to go back with good news.
They appealed to the people here to help them in finding out their near and dear ones on the basis of what they called "sufficient proofs" not only substantiated by the Indian sources, but also the Pakistan side indicating that these people were in Pakistani jails.
They said that Attock jail was not included in their visit schedule, but they requested the authorities to let them go there and some other military detention centres. They further said that they also wanted to visit some of the senior military officers, who were performing their duties at the time of war to ascertain about these people.
They said they had also requested Pakistani authorities to arrange a meeting with President General Pervez Musharraf for convincing him on these evidences. According to them, an Indian Major named Ashok Suri managed to send hand-written message from Karachi to his father R. S Suri in New Delhi in 1974 that he was alive and in Pakistan.
Besides, they said, that on April 12, 1979, Minister of State for External Affairs Samarndra Kundum, in reply to a question, informed Lok Sabha that there were 280 Indians in Pakistan and among those, 40 of them were defence personnel, but they never returned to India.
They also quoted a news item from the "Contour" magazine which carried a story titled "The Forgotten Heroes" listing all the above 40 names. In 1980, they said, in a book written by a British author Victoria Schoffield, titled "Bhutto-trial and execution" on page 59, there was a reference to 40 Indian prisoners of war lodged in Kot Lakhpat jail.
The relatives of the missing persons also referred to a news item of the Pakistani newspaper, "Sunday Pakistan Observer," of December 5, 1971 publishing that five Indian pilots had been captured, one of them being Lieutenant Tombay, (real name Tambay) whose name was not in the list of the PoWs.
They further said that the reputed "Time" magazine issue of December 27, 1971 carried a picture of an Indian soldier behind the bars was recognised as Major A.K Ghosh. However, he did not come back with the other prisoners. They said we had come here on a goodwill mission and would be happy if their prisoners would be given pardon on humanitarian grounds as they were languishing in jails for the last 36 years.