Indian returns to freedom

In that span of time Gopal Dass lost his youth, saw some of his Indian co-prisoners dying and a few others he left behind are terribly sick and afflicted by tuberculosis and other diseases.

As Dass crossed over into Indian territory at the border point here Thursday morning, he kneeled and touched his forehead on Punjab’s soil in reverence. From the intertwining of a high-stakes cricket match with high-stakes diplomacy, whose result was his freedom from Kot Lakhpat jail, it took a little over a week before he returned home to a warm and emotional welcome by his family.

Dass’ siblings last saw him one day in July 1984 when he strayed over the border and was promptly arrested by Pakistani Rangers troops on charges of spying. Clad in a white shirt and a dark-brown trouser, a dirty nylon bag dangling at his right shoulder, Dass was hugged by his brothers and sisters amid a dozen people from his native Gurdaspur district who had gathered to watch him cross over. Dass’ family members, including brother Anand Veer, two sisters and niece Navjot garlanded him and wept inconsolably as they saw a man who had aged considerably in the years he was incarcerated at Kot Lakhpat.

“I had lost all hope to see Gopal. But I am happy to see my brother alive,” Dass’ elder sister Krishna Devi, who reached Attari despite her poor health, said. “He looks so different now.

He did not have a moustache earlier. Every year, for 27 years, I missed him terribly on Raksha bandhan,” she said. For nearly three decades, Gopal said, his optimism and hope to live and unite with his family kept him alive.

“But I know what I have lost – my entire youth,” he said.
Apparently healthy, Dass was calm and composed, but he did give vent to his grudge against the Indian government who, he said, had abandoned some of its countrymen languishing in Kot Lakhpat for several years.

“There are 30 Indian nationals who have completed their terms but continue to rot in the prison. Among them are some who are dead, others are dying and still others who have lost their sanity,” Dass said.

Veer said it was the Indian Supreme Court judge’s appeal to the Pakistani authorities to set him free that “the Almighty” heard, though he was also thankful of Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari who remitted his sentence on humanitarian grounds on March 27, a day before the charged semifinal between India and Pakistan which Mahender Singh  Dhoni’s team won.