Gujarat HC issues notice to Centre on missing fisherman

The Gujarat High Court has issued notice to the Centre and the state government on a petition filed by the wife of a fisherman, who is believed to be languishing in a Pakistani jail for over eight years.
Justice R M Chhaya also issued notice on January 23 to the ministries of Home Affairs and External Affairs.
Petitioner Gitaben Gohil, wife of fisherman Kalubhai Gohil from Jamwala village of Gir Somnath district, has sought a direction from the high court to the respondents to collectively ensure and secure Gohil's release and also get him repatriated to India.
The petitioner said her husband, a small-time fisherman, went missing on November 17, 2008 after the boat on which he was fishing in the Arabian Sea met with an accident.

While Gohil somehow managed to swim to the shore in Pakistan, he was captured by Pakistani authorities and has been languishing in jail there since then, said the petition.
The petitioner said her family had assumed Gohil to be dead and even performed his last rites, only to learn in 2015 from an another fisherman who returned home after being released by Pakistani authorities that her husband was alive and jailed there.

Fisherman Kanubhai Gohil told Gitaben that he met her husband Kalubhai at a Karachi jail where he told him that he was captured after he swam till Keti Bandar of Pakistan following accident of his fishing trawler, and was enslaved by Pakistani fishermen for around six months before being arrested by Pakistani police on charges of being a spy, said the petition.

The petitioner said her husband was not released even when hundreds of Indian fishermen jailed by Pakistani authorities for venturing near the international maritime border were released in these eight years.
Gitaben said she made several representations before the ministries, but nothing has been done to secure her husband's release.
The petition also said that the Centre is not making genuine and bona fide efforts to secure her husband's release, even when it "knows' of his arrest.
"There has not been adequate effort to effectively represent the case of the petitioner," she told the court, adding Pakistan has not given reply to the High Commissioner of India in Pakistan seeking confirmation of her husband's presence.

She sought the court's directions to secure his release and provide him legal and human assistance, while also during the pendency of order direct the External Affairs Ministry to place on record details of his whereabouts.
The matter will be next heard on February 1.