A 16-year-old juvenile AID-affected fisherman, who was released from Juvenile Jail Karachi on humanitarian grounds and sent to India, has wished to be sent back to Pakistan to live in the jail here. According to a Times of India report, the HIV positive youth from Jamburi Village in Valsad, was released from Karachi Jail in April this year.
The paper reports that instead of welcoming him, his father tried to burn him alive because he was inflicted by the virus. It quoted the boy Bhagan alias Narendra as saying that "Pakistani loko mari sari sanbhal rakhta (Pakistanis took good care of me)."
Narendra, according to Times of India (August 12), has made Vapi Railway station his home and was spotted by its correspondent near the lavatory inside the railway station shivering with cold. Beggars had teased him whole night and forced him to sleep there.
The Paper says Narendra has decided never to go back home. He went to Vapi Police station for help but the cops shooed him away, taking him for drunkard. Not having eaten for a couple of days, he had become weak and could not even walk straight.
In Karachi jail he was kept in a separate room with four other HIV-infected persons and would get food and medicine on time. Narendra told Times of India that "When the Pakistani authorities decided to send me back earlier because of my HIV status, the rest of the fishermen in the jail, said I was lucky. But they were wrong".
Yamin Khan told newsmen that the boy was arrested for violating Pakistani waters. A case was registered against him at Docks Police Station and remanded to jail on February 9. The IG Prisons said that under Sindh Government's AIDS Control Programme he was subjected to HIV test, which proved positive and his disease was found on March 27.
He said he was immediately sent to jail hospital and he contacted the Sindh Government to secure his release and send him to India. He said he also approached Secretary Interior Syed Kamal Shah and after fulfilment of necessary legal formalities, he was flown to Bombay by a PIA flight after his ticket for Karachi-Bombay was arranged by Justice Nasir Aslam Zahid (Retd).