The fate of 74 Missing Defence Personnel (MDP), including 54 prisoners of 1965 and 1971 war, who are stated to be in the custody of the Pakistan authorities, is all but sealed as successive governments at the Centre have not been able to do anything beyond providing the number of MDPs.
In an RTI reply to The Sunday Guardian, the Ministry of External Affairs, Pakistan section, while responding to how many Indian POWs were in the custody of other countries, stated that: “As per available information, there are 74 missing defence personnel (MDP), including 54 prisoners of 1965 and 1971 wars, in the custody of the Pakistani authorities. However, Pakistan, does not acknowledge the presence of any MDP in its custody.”
The fact that the Indian government has now closed the chapter of these MDPs gets clear as the same response in verbatim was also given by the then Minister of State for External Affairs, Preneet Kaur, in December 2010 while replying to a question in the Rajya Sabha and again in August 2012 while replying to a question in the Lok Sabha.
Similarly, the exact response was also shared by the then Defence Minister A.K. Antony in the Lok Sabha in August 2013 and then by the present MEA State, V.K. Singh in December 2015 and again in February 2017.
The questions about these MDPs was first raised in Parliament, 38 years ago, in 1979, when the then Minister of State for External Affairs, Samarendra Kundu, while replying to a question in the Lok Sabha had mentioned about these 54 MDPs.
In February 2005, the then Pakistan interior minister, Aftab Ahmad Khan had presented a report in the Pakistan Senate which stated that 182 Indian nationals, including five women, were languishing in different Pakistani jails since 1971, out of which, as per his own admission, only 50 were ever provided consular access.
The rest of the 132 were neither provided any consular access nor legal access.
However, no Indian government had followed up on this report which could have given some insight into who these 132 Indian nationals were and whether the included the 54 PoWs too.
The only concrete step that was ever taken by Government of India in the matter was in 2007, when the Pakistan government was persuaded to allow a delegation of the relatives of the these missing defence personnel to visit prisons in Pakistan.
This delegation, visited 10 jails in Pakistan in June 2007, but could not find the physical presence of any of them.
As per officials, out of these 54, 27 belong to the Army, including three such personnel whose service record, unit and next of kin are not available.
Similarly, 24 personnel from the IAF are missing, while the Navy has lost two personnel. Lance Naik Hazoora Singh of the Border Security Force, too, was taken as a PoW by the Pakistan army.