Hamid Nihal Ansari jailed in Pakistan to be repatriated to India

Indian national Hamid Nihal Ansari, who is lodged in Kohat Central Jail in Pakistan, will be released tomorrow and repatriated to India.

Pakistan Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Mohammad Faisal confirmed that Ansari is being released upon completion of his sentence.

Ansari was slapped with charges of espionage and involvement in anti-state activities and was awarded a three-year imprisonment by a military court in 2015.

Ansari, who was a teacher at the Mumbai Management College, went to Pakistan in 2012 to meet a woman whom he had befriended through social media. He went missing after being apprehended by the Pakistan intelligence agencies and local police from Kohat district in November the same year.

The Pakistani security agencies claimed Ansari had used fake identity card in the name of "Hamza" and he had entered Pakistan through Afghanistan without travel documents. They charged him for "anti-state activities".

The news of the Ansari's arrest came to fore after his mother Fauzia Ansari filed a habeas corpus petition in the High Court here. On January 13 the Court informed that Ansari was in the custody of Pakistani Army and was being tried by a military court.

In August 2016, Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj had asked the Indian High Commissioner in Islamabad to seek consular access to Ansari.