M A I N   N E W S

Indians in UAE prisons
Mishri Khan case a blessing in disguise for many
Prabhjot Singh
Tribune News Service

Dubai, July 13
Highlighting of the case of 17 Punjabi boys facing death sentence in Mishri Khan murder case in the Indian media has rekindled hopes of hundreds of other Indians languishing in various jails of the seven-member states of the United Arab Emirates.

Though no official enumeration or study has been conducted to ascertain the exact number of Indians, either facing trial or convicted in cases relating to drinking or rioting after drinking, murder, or causing grievous injury under the influence of liquor, adultery, illegal stay, the number is estimated to be alarmingly large and may be even touching the four-figure mark.

Yadavinder Singh Dhillon, a Chandigarh-based human rights lawyer, who had an opportunity to interact with the 17 boys last month, met at least 33 Punjabi boys facing trial in different cases. Another Chandigarh lawyer Navkiran Singh was permitted to meet one of eight boys undergoing sentence in a Dubai jail for murdering a fellow Punjabi boy from Kapurthala.

Recently, this Chandigarh-based organisation sought the help of the Indian Mission here to conduct a survey to find out how many Indians were either facing trials or serving sentences in various jails of all seven states of the UAE. “If not all at least a fairly large percentage could be defended against prosecution with proper representation in the court,” adds Yadavinder Singh Dhillon, who is here for the hearing tomorrow.

Even in the case of the 17 Indian boys, 16 from Punjab and one from Haryana, the conviction virtually went uncontested as they had a para-legal to defend them. Their appeal is coming up before a Sharjah Sharia Court tomorrow.

In some of the cases, Indian community and India-based human rights organisation have already come to the defence of those facing convictions or different sentences.

While the Mishri Khan case has all 17 suspects from India, there are several other cases, where Indian and Pakistani boys have been named suspects in cases of murders or criminal assaults, and rioting against fellow South Asians.

In one case, eight boys from India and two from Punjab are facing the trial in one such murder case. Hearing in the case has been adjourned till August 2.

Families of all these 17 boys must be praying for the admission of the appeal. Once the appeal is admitted, these boys could hope for some major relief, including acquittal for some of them.

The Indian Consulate here has been working overtime to provide every possible assistance, including legal aid, so that their viewpoint which reportedly remained either unrepresented or under-represented or was handicapped by the language barriers would now be brought out strongly by a team of legal luminaries the Consulate has organised for them. Some of the top Sharia experts will be defending the appeal. The defence, supported by the Consulate, has an onerous task of locating an acceptable interpreter or translator who can translate from Punjabi to Arabic during the appeal proceedings. Earlier suggestion of the defence to have a team of two interpreters, one who could translate from Punjabi to Hindi or English and the second from Hindi/English to Arabic was not accepted by the court.