Nehal Ahmed Ansari and Fauzia have left no stone unturned in their pursuit to bring their son back home to Mumbai from a jail in Pakistan. And now, there seems to be some hope of joy returning to their life.
Their son Hamid, a software engineer, went missing in November 2012 days after he flew to Kabul on the pretext of attending a job interview.
Hamid crossed over to Pakistan and reached Kohat on November 12, 2012. He obtained a fake identity card from someone in Karak in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and used it to enter Pakistan.
From the Facebook posts and Gmail records, the parents suspect that Hamid may have been in love with a Pakistani girl and had perhaps entered the country through the Afghanistan border to meet her.
Hamid had befriended a few people through the internet and was constantly in touch with them. Three online Pakistani friends suggested him to come to Kohat from Kabul by illegally crossing the porous Afghanistan-Pakistan border. They encouraged him and also gave instructions about how to cross the border.
The three persons are Atta-ur-Rehman, a graphic designer with 'Dastak', an Urdu magazine published from Kohat, Shazia Khan, who claims to be a medical doctor and Saba Khan, whose identity is yet to be confirmed.
But on December 15, 2015, Hamid was convicted by a military court and sentenced to three years imprisonment for espionage and is currently at Mardan Central Prison in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.
Now, the Pakistan Interior Ministry has told the court that once his sentence is completed on December 15, 2018, Hamid would be handed over to Indian authorities at the Attari-Wagah border.
The Pakistan-India Peoples' Forum for Peace and Democracy (PIPFPD) has been pursuing the matter for long.
“We have been working on it, we know what the parents have gone through in the last six years….once his sentence is complete, technically the Pakistan government would deport him. The Indian government also needs to act and ensure that he is secured safely and is back home,” PIPFPD general secretary Jatin Desai told DH.
“The parents are happy…they have waited for long….some more months and hopefully if all goes well, he would be back,” said Desai, who personally knows the Ansari family.