An Indian youth, who jailed in Karachi, Pakistan due to crossed over to Pakistan’s Sindh in 2013 in search of water, was released from jail and handed over to his family at Wagah border on Wednesday. Twenty-one-year-old Jetindaera Arjanwara, who from Madhya Pradesh, is suffering from a blood disorder, sickle cell anaemia, which requires a regular blood transfusion to defect the disease.
The release of Jetindaera was after a month-long coordinated campaign by both Pakistani and Indian civil society activists. His send back to the country was earlier confirmed by the Indian High Commission officials in Islamabad.
The decision to release Jetindaera was taken after intervention by a Pakistani barrister, Haya Zahid, who was briefed about his case by Hyderabad juvenile jail officials in Sindh province in 2014. Zahid was at the time inspecting sanitary conditions in provincial jails as part of a government-mandated committee. Jetindaera, who was a teenager at the time, had already completed the customary jail sentence by then.
Jetindaera’s release comes close on the heels of 23-year-old Dalwinder Singh being handed back to the BSF on Sunday. Jetindaera’s release was, however, much delayed. While he was picked up in 2013, for the next four years, through the highs and lows of the India-Pakistan relationship, Jetindaera became another statistic — one of 58 Indian civil prisoners that Pakistan says reside in its jails, forgotten by mostly everybody (India has 56 Pakistani civil prisoners in its jail, the Supreme Court was recently told.) Until Zahid, once again, spotted him in February 2018, on one of her many rounds, this time in Malir jail in Karachi.
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By 2018, Jetindaera was in a critical condition. Doctors at Malir jail insisted his condition be brought to the notice of the Pakistani government as well as Indian officials. The Indian High Commission in Pakistan later formally asked for his repatriation.
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