'Indian spy' from Mumbai sentenced to three years in prison in Pakistan
A military court on Monday sentenced an Indian spy to three years after he pleaded guilty.
Dunya News Report (Humaira Sajid)
Peshawar – An Indian national, Hamid Nehal Ansari has been sentenced to three years in prison after he was convicted for espionage in a court martial, Dunya News reported. Mr Ansari had gone missing from Kohat over three years ago until he was nabbed via agencies and sentenced by the military court.
Hamid Ansari was arrested by law enforcement agencies during a raid in Kohat. Sources said the military court handed down the punishment after Ansari admitted illegally entering Pakistan from Afghanistan for the purpose of espionage in Pakistan.
Pakistani security services had also recovered maps of sensitive installations from his possession at the time of his arrest. The convict had seven Facebook accounts as well as around 30 email addresses, the sources further said.
Hamid Nehal Ansari is a 31-year old engineering and management graduate from Mumbai. He had left for Kabul on November 4, 2012, on a 90-day tourist visa. He remained in touch with his family for a week after which he went missing. The family then lodged a complaint with Versova police, Mumbai.
His mother claimed he was in touch with some Pakistani friends who had suggested him to cross into Pakistan from Afghanistan without a visa. She claimed that he had become friends with this girl from Pakistan through social media and had decided to visit Pakistan in order to meet her.
Ms Ansari had earlier sent an application to the Supreme Court s human rights cell which forwarded the case to the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances. The commission had on April 10, 2014, directed the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa home department to constitute a joint investigation team to trace the whereabouts of Mr Ansari. An FIR was also registered at Karak city police station and the mysterious turn of events is still awaited to be resolved.
Over three years after Ansari went missing in Pakistan, the authorities last month admitted that he has been in army custody and is presently facing a trial in military courts. In light of this information, a two-member bench had on January 13 disposed off a habeas corpus petition filed by Fauzia Ansari, the convict s mother, against his alleged illegal detention. However, Military Intelligence Directorate intimated that Ansari will be released only if he is found not guilty for espionage.
Ansari, a Mumbai resident, was taken into custody by police and Intelligence Bureau (IB) officials in Kohat, about 70 kms from Peshawar, in November 2012. Ever since, his whereabouts were unknown. A police official claimed that the man had introduced himself as Afzal and the alleged RAW agent was arrested after an intelligence based operation was carried out by security agencies.
While giving a reference to an initial interrogation, the police official said Afzal is a residen t of New Delhi, had arrived in Karachi illegally and later shifted to Lahore. However, due to insufficient evidence at the moment strict action against the accused is impossible but he is being questioned by the law enforcement agencies, the police official said.
Pakistan and India, the two nuclear-armed countries frequently accuse each other of spying on military activities. Late in December 2015, Delhi police claimed they have arrested a former Indian Air Force officer on charges of passing secrets to Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), falling victim to a “honey trap”.
Most recently, in the early hours of January 2, 2016 the terrorist who struck at the airbase Pathankot is alleged by the Indian Police as an Indian national working as an agent of Pakistan s spy agency the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI). The police said Irshad Ahmed was working undercover as a manual worker at the Indian Army s 29 Division Headquarter in the Mamoon Cantt in Pathankot, where terrorists attacked on air force base last month.
Speaking to a Pakistani news channel, the former President and COAS General Musharraf said that both India and Pakistan are victims of extremists and accused the New Delhi government of putting pressure on Islamabad over terrorism. He said Pakistan was also suffering from what had happened in Pathankot.
"Terrorism is prevalent in both India and Pakistan," said Musharraf. "We are also victims of the same so we should not overreact to what happened in Pathankot. Yes, of course we want to control such incidents, but one should not get hyper over such incidents." Musharraf said.
Musharraf accused India of turning to Pakistan every time a terrorist attack happened; while he claimed that India too host extremists in parts of the country. He said that there had been a rise in "disgruntlement" among India s Muslim community since Narendra Modi came to power in 2014.
As a counterargument, India s opposition party has lambasted Musharraf over his comments, accusing him of not being in a position to offer any authoritative opinions on such matters. The Congress Party s leader Panna Lal Punia accused the Pakistani government of not taking any action against the perpetrators of the Pathankot incident amid false media reports that Pakistan had rejected evidence provided by Indian officials about the terrorist attack.
In past, the intelligence based agencies of Pakistan also got their hands on several Indian spies working undercover and disclosed important information. The infamous Ravinder Kaushik alias “Black Tiger”, who was commissioned in the Pakistan Army and soon promoted to the rank of Major, was also an undercover RAW agent providing assistance to India. During that time he converted to Islam and married a local girl Amanat, fathering a son with her. However, in September 1983, he was caught when Inayat Masiha, sent by RAW to get in touch with him, inadvertently blew his cover to Pakistani forces upon interrogation. Kaushik was then captured and sentenced to death for spying, but the sentence was later reduced to life imprisonment.
According to an expert on Indo-Pak relations, the constant arrests of Indian RAW agents from Pakistan points to the involvement of Indian undercover intelligence officers engaging in espionage activities in grave violation of their diplomatic status.
