Click to play videoHoshiarpur (Punjab): After languishing in a Pakistan jail for over three decades, pardoned Indian national Kashmir Singh will return home in two days.
The people of Nangal Chouran village are preparing to receive one of their own in true Punjabi style. It's no ordinary homecoming.
On Thursday, Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf freed Kashmir Singh, who had been jailed for 35 years. For Kashmir’s wife, it will be a bittersweet reunion with a husband who left young and returns an elderly man.
“It is a very important day for me. We are thankful to God that he is back. Life has been full of sorrow. I have laboured to take care of my children and have faced many troubles,” Kashmir’s wife Paramjit Kaur says.
Kashmir Singh was arrested in Rawalpindi in 1973. He was accused of being a spy and thereafter sentenced to death. He remained on death row in sub human conditions until Ansar Burney, a human rights activist, helped him locate his family and secured his release.
“We have been writing to governments for ages but didn’t receive any reaction ever. We had written a letter to UNO and I think that has been responsible for it. But we are thankful to the government for everything,” Kashmir’s son Shishpal Singh says.
Kashmir’s relatives and friends plan to give him a hero's welcome. And while some of them have never even met him, for the elders, this is the end of a 35-year struggle.
“We studied together, we grew up together. Now, we will live together once more,” Kashmir’s classmate Gurdial Singh says.
The Pakistan government says Kashmir Singh will be repatriated as early as Saturday.
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