NEWSLINKS
US EDITION
COLUMNISTS
DIARY
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA!
ELECTION 99
ELECTIONS
ARCHIVES

Search Rediff

'Thank God, I am finally home!'

Tara Shankar Sahay in New Delhi

The over-protective policemen tried to hustle him away from the preying media. Reporters only wanted replies to their shouted queries, let his feelings be darned! And jostling cameramen, they wanted to freeze his frame in this historic moment.

Some homecoming this.

Roop Lal Shaharia, the 57-year-old Indian who languished in a Pakistani jail for the last 26 years, finally arrived in Delhi by a Pakistan International Airlines flight on Friday. For the reporters, the three-hour wait finally culminated in a darshan of the man who wore a happy smile and a black-grey stubble.

"Main bahut khush hoon, uparwale in dua se sub kucch theek hai [I am very happy. By the grace of God, everything is fine now]," Roop Lal told reporters.

Roop Lal's daughter Sunita smiled happily, constantly waving to the reporters. And Sunita's baby daughter was ensconced on her grandpa's lap as he spoke to the media.

The Delhi policemen kept the reporters and cameramen guessing the whereabouts of the man they were looking for. Even as reporters waited for Roop Lal at a marked exit, the police tried to smuggle him out through another outlet. However, an alert woman reporter managed to check the move. There was a melee as the media surrounded Roop Lal's happy family. As he was wheeled out, he held his son-in-law Kishan Chawla's hand.

The police quickly bundled Roop Lal and his family into a white Ambassador car and sought to push the reporters away. But they did not reckon with the infuriated press corps, who refused to let the vehicle pass. Finally, after shouted slogans of 'Delhi policemurdabad', the police let Roop Lal meet the press.

"I was scared in jail because some of the jail personnel handed out all kinds of dreadful threats. My life was reduced to a misery... Thank God, I am finally home!" Roop Lal told this correspondent.

Roop Lal dwelt on his fears in jail, the times of sheer hopelessness and craving for his family. He said he felt a ray of hope when a kindly jail staff whispered to him that some efforts were being made to ensure his freedom.

Earlier, Ajay Chawla, a relative, had said Roop Lal was informed about his release by the First Secretary of the Indian High Commission in Islamabad, Dikaram Jatav. Chawla said it was the tireless efforts of Jahangir of Pakistan's Human Rights Commission and Brigadier Abid Hamid that freed Roop Lal.

Chawla was all praise for the two. "There are good and decent people in Pakistan," he said.

According to Chawla, Roop Lal's wife, on hearing of her husband's capture in Pakistan more than a quarter of century ago, had entrusted her daughter Sunita, then a two-year-old, to the child's grandmother and got remarried.

"Roop Lal's wife never contacted his family again," Chawla said.

Chawla however was not able to say how or why Roop Lal was captured by the Pakistani army. He said when Roop Lal got to know that he had been given the death sentence, his left side became paralysed. He recovered partially when that sentence was changed to 25 years in prison.

Significantly, officials of the ministries of external and home affairs were there to receive Roop Lal. A senior home ministry official told rediff.com that Roop Lal was not in the Indian army but had been one of its "sources."

ALSO SEE
Roop Lal back, after 26 years in Pak jail

Back to top

Tell us what you think of this report