India’s Release of Prisoners

Re “India’s Hands Aren’t Clean,” Commentary, Jan. 9: Rohan Oberoi’s assertion that the three men freed by India to secure the safe release of the passengers of the hijacked airplane had never been charged and were detained illegally is false. One of them, Ahmad Omar Sayed Sheikh, a British national, was charged, tried, convicted and was serving his sentence at the time he was freed in response to the demand of the hijackers. The other two, Masood Azhar and Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar, had also been served charge sheets and judicial proceedings against them were underway at the time of their release. Zargar was being tried for some of the most brutal murders committed in Jammu and Kashmir.

Oberoi’s accusations of “custodial assassinations” are totally baseless. Some of the worst and most dreaded terrorists serving sentences were afforded a full legal opportunity to defend themselves, as in the notable case of the killers of Rajiv Gandhi. The international community has accepted the humanitarian considerations that led India to free the terrorists. The wanton hijacking of the Indian Airlines aircraft has only strengthened the resolve of India and other democratic and law-abiding countries to fight this menace.

R.M. ABHYANKAR

Consul General of India

San Francisco

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Oberoi deftly exposes India’s contempt for human rights and international law by prolonged detention without trial of alleged terrorists. But that is only the tip of the iceberg. Egregious human rights violations are perpetrated routinely with impunity against the civilian population of Kashmir by India’s 700,000 military and paramilitary forces stationed in the disputed territory: more than 60,000 killings in the last decade alone, rape, torture, mutilation, abduction, plunder, arbitrary detentions and ruthless suppression of political dissent.

India stands in equal contempt of still-binding U.N. Security Council resolutions that prescribe a self-determination plebiscite in Kashmir, administered by the U.N. India has unilaterally renounced its plebiscite obligations and illegally lassoed Kashmir into its sovereign orbit. Yet the U.S. has done nothing to call India to account. Doesn’t that complacency fuel an international lawlessness that the U.S. purports to deplore?

GHULAM NABI FAI

Exec. Dir., Kashmiri

American Council, Washington