Wasil Khan, the 43-year-old Bihari, forced to spend 10 long years in jail after the Punjab police branded him a “Pakistan national” and falsely implicated him in a bomb attack conspiracy, has finally been set free on the orders of the Punjab and Haryana high court.
Justice Mehtab Singh Gill ordered the immediate release of the prisoner during an inspection visit to Amritsar. Deputy commissioner Kahan Singh Pannu said after perusing an inquiry report and documentary proof of identity submitted by Wasil Khan’s family last week, the Judge directed that the prisoner be safely handed to the custody of his sister and brother-in-law from Bihar’s East Champaran District.
“Justice Gill said there was sufficient evidence of the prisoner’s (Indian) nationality,” Mr Pannu said.
Wasil Khan was detained in the year 2000 after he failed to adequately explain his presence near the India-Pakistan Border in Gurdaspur District. Inexplicably, two years on, in March 2002, he was named as charged with involvement in a bomb attack near Sirhind Town and sentenced to eight years in jail.
Having completed the sentence, he was lodged in the Amritsar Jail transit camp pending repatriation to Pakistan, when his older sister Mohazra Khatoon showed up on last Wednesday, with irrefutable proof of her brother’s Indianness.
Evidently a simpleton, Wasil Khan said he was working as cleaner on an apple-truck bound for Delhi from Jammu and Kashmir when he was detained by the police. Based on his stammering and incoherent responses and that he had a Muslim name, the police concluded Wasil was a Pakistani even though nothing incriminating was found on his person.