Indian prisoner attacked twice in Pakistani jail: Report

Peshawar: A 31-year-old Indian prisoner, convicted by a military court this year for possessing a fake Pakistani identity card, was attacked twice by inmates in a Peshawar jail during the last two months, his lawyer has said.

Hamid Nehal Ansari, a Mumbai resident arrested in 2012 for illegally entering Pakistan from Afghanistan reportedly to meet a girl he had befriended online, suffered injuries after he was attacked by inmates in the Peshawar Central Prison.

Ansari's lawyer Qazi Mohammad Anwar told a Peshawar High Court bench yesterday that his client had been kept in a death cell with a hardened criminal awaiting execution for a murder.

Superintendent of the prison Masoodur Rehman confirmed the incidents but insisted they're of minor nature and that such incidents did happen in prisons, the Dawn reported today.

Rehman also told the bench that Ansari, who was serving three years jail term, had been kept in the death cell.

"He (Ansari) can't be kept in a normal barrack along with other prisoners for the sake of his security," he said.

Ansari's lawyer said the jail superintendent should give an undertaking to the court that attacks won't happen against his client in future.

The superintendent, however, said he couldn't give a written guarantee in that regard, the paper said.

Ansari had gone missing after he was taken into custody by intelligence agencies and local police in Kohat in 2012 and finally in reply to a habeas corpus petition filed by his mother, Fauzia Ansari, the high court was informed on January 13 that he was in custody of the Pakistan Army and was being tried by a military court.

He was convicted by the military court for possessing a fake Pakistani identity card and sentenced to three years imprisonment.