KARACHI: Another Pakistani fisherman was beaten to death by the jail staff of an Indian prison the other day.
According to a spokesperson for Fishermen’s Cooperative Society, a fisherman named Muhammad Sohail was arrested at sea by the Indian coastguard on October 2, 2016, during a fishing trip when his trawler drifted to the Indian side by mistake.
Sohail, a resident of Muhammadi Colony in Karachi, is the fourth Pakistani to die in an Indian jail during a short span of one month.
The spokesperson added that the reason behind Sohail’s death is yet to be ascertained. However, sources and media reports suggested that the fisherman was beaten to death by the Indian jail staff.
Pakistan and India frequently arrest fishermen as there is no clear demarcation of the maritime border in the Arabian Sea and these fishermen do not have boats equipped with the technology to know their precise location.
Tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbours flared up in February after a suicide bombing in the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir killed more than 40 Indian soldiers in Pulwama. Following the attack, Muslims were being viciously tortured by the extremists in India, occupied Kashmir, while Pakistani inmates were also under threat.
Earlier, a Pakistani prisoner had lost his life after being brutally subjected to torture by the Indian prison staff on March 28.
Another Pakistani fisherman, identified as Noorul Ameen, who had taken into custody by the Indian forces over mistakenly entering into Indian waters in 2017, was viciously subjected to torture in the prison by the jail staff.
