This story is from December 14, 2018

Mumbai youth to return after release from Pakistan jail

Mumbai youth to return after release from Pakistan jail
Hamid Nehal Ansari (File photo)
ISLAMABAD/MUMBAI: Engineer Hamid Nehal Ansari, who will complete a three-year term in a Pakistan jail on December 15, will only be able to return to his home in Versova in Mumbai a month later.
The Pakistan interior ministry told the Peshawar high court on Thursday that the process of his deportation to India would take a month.
A two-judge bench heard Ansari’s appeal, stating that the federal government had not taken any steps for his release.
Ansari’s lawyer said his client’s prison term would end on December 15 and he should be released on December 16 morning.
In Mumbai, his mother Fauzia broke down on hearing the news. “I have crossed out 1,095 days on my calendar in the wait for my son. Should I start counting all over again?”
She said the Indian government had assured her that his paperwork would be processed within an hour of his release from Pakistan.
Ansari, 33, entered Pakistan from Afghanistan on November 12, 2012, with a fake identity card sent to him by his Facebook friend from Karak in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province to “rescue a woman friend from a forced marriage”. He stayed in Karak for two days and was dropped in Kohat, where he was taken into custody by intelligence officials. A secret military court convicted him of espionage and anti-state activities on December 15, 2015, charges that Ansari denied in his petition in the Peshawar HC.In August, the HC disposed of Ansari’s writ petition, seeking remission of his three-year prison term after the interior ministry assured the court he would be deported to India after completion of his jail term on December 15.
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