Body of Indian fisherman who died in Pakistani jail transported to his village in Gujarat

Porbandar: The body of a 31-year-old fisherman, who died in a Pakistani jail last month, was handed over to his family in his native village of Nanavada in Gujarat's Junagadh district, officials said on Monday.

Haribhai Sosa, a resident of Porbandar, had been imprisoned in Karachi for over three years after he was apprehended by Pakistani security forces in early 2021. He was arrested near the international maritime border while fishing in the Arabian Sea.

According to officials, Sosa died of heart failure on October 25 while in the jail in Karachi on October 25.

The body was handed over to Indian authorities at the Attari border in Punjab and flown to Ahmedabad from where it was transported to Nanavada village by road on Sunday night.

Sosa, along with other fishermen, was intercepted by the Pakistan Marines while fishing off the Porbandar coast and taken to Karachi, said Ashish Vaghela, the Fisheries Officer from Porbandar "The provisional postmortem report provided by Pakistani authorities confirmed that Sosa died of heart failure," he said.

Sosa’s sentence was completed in July 2021. Still, he was not released, despite a 2008 bilateral agreement between India and Pakistan stipulating that such convicts should be repatriated within a month of serving their sentence and after their nationality is confirmed, said activist Jatin Desai, who has been working for the welfare of Indian fishermen.

According to Desai, five Indian fishermen died in Pakistani custody in 2023, and three have died so far this year. Over the past decade, a total of 26 fishermen have lost their lives in Pakistani jails, Desai said.

He said 212 fishermen, mostly from Gujarat, and some from Maharashtra and Diu, are currently lodged in Pakistani jails.