Gurdaspur: India's forgotten spies are back in focus after the tragic death of Indian prisoner Sarbajit Singh, but Delhi never accepted that he was a spy. Recruited from India's border villages by intelligence agencies, spies often spend decades in Pakistani jails, but are hardly ever acknowledged.
Former spy Surjit Singh, who spent 31 years in Pakistani jails, says he was lucky not to suffer Sarabjit's fate. "I was lucky to have returned or else I could have suffered the same fate," Surjit said.
A former BSF sub-inspector, Surjit made 85 trips into Pakistan, smuggling out files on Pakistani troop movements. He was captured and jailed in 1981. Three decades later, when he returned to freedom at Wagah, it was to a nation that had forgotten him. "No one remembered me in my village, every one knew me as a Pakistani prisoner," Surjit said.
The 3,000-km border that India shares with Pakistan, is dotted with villages that grow spies. Some like Dadwan in Gurdaspur have been tagged as 'Spy Villages' for providing a regular supply of recruits to the shadowy world of intelligence agencies like the RAW. In most cases, it's not a sense of patriotism that drives the bravado, but it's poverty....
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12:19 PM, May 13, 2013
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday expressed its anguish at mentally challenged and deaf-mute foreign nationals, mostly Pakistanis, continuing to languish in Indian jails long after completing their sentences, and asked why the issue could "not be taken up at the highest level". An apex court bench of Justice R M Lodha and Justice H L Gokhale said that "such cases pain us" and wanted to know "what is...
08:28 PM, Apr 10, 2012
Sarabjit will move a fresh mercy petition before Pakistan government. ... 
