SOURCE: ENS
A PAKISTANI national who was held as a detainee at the Joint Interrogation Centre (JIC) in Bhuj town of Kutch district since 2016, died in a hospital on Wednesday after complaints of breathing problems. The deceased was identified as 50-year-old Riyaz, son of Fiaz Baksh, a native of Kantiyar village in Muzaffargarh district in Punjab province of Pakistan.
“He was suffering from some respiratory ailment and was hospitalised two days ago. But he was discharged after a brief treatment and was put on medicine. However, he complained of breathlessness again on Wednesday morning.
Therefore, he was taken to GK General Hospital, in Bhuj where he died,” PH Lagdhirka, Police Inspector at JIC told The Indian Express on Thursday.
Doctors of GK General Hospital said that Riyaz was declared brought-dead.
“The patient had already died by the time he was brought to the hospital. Therefore, after some paperwork, police took the body to Jamnagar for postmortem as it was a medico-legal case. The same patient was brought to the GK General Hospital on the night of November 2 with complaints of chest pain. He was given OPD treatment and after his condition improved, police had taken him back from hospital,” a doctor of the GK General Hospital said.
The police inspector said that they had shifted Riyaz’s body to the state government-run GG hospital in Jamnagar for conducting a postmortem.
“The exact cause of his death will be ascertained once the post-mortem report is available. His body will be kept in Jamnagar. We will report the death to the state government, which in turn would intimate the central government. The Indian government would then contact the government of Pakistan for repatriating Riyaz’s body,” Lagdhirka further said.
Riyaz was apprehended by the Border Security Force (BSF) after he allegedly crossed over to the Indian side of the Indo-Pakistan border in eastern part of the Kutch district on February 12, 2016. Later on, he was arrested by Kutch (east) police and kept at JIC in Bhuj.
“But interrogation yielded little as it turned out that he was suffering from some mental illness resulting in loss of memory. He could barely tell his whereabouts due to his unstable mental condition and therefore, a clinical psychiatrist in Bhuj was treating him since the time of his detention,” a JIC officer said on the condition of anonymity. The officer added that Riyaz was given consular access twice—in March 2016 and in February this year.
“Pakistan Embassy, prima facie, accepted that Riyaz was a Pakistani national. However, they had not given us his exact whereabouts. Even at the time of his arrest and subsequent interrogation, his mental condition was not stable. But police had recovered some Pakistani currency notes from him and based on that, it was concluded that he was a Pakistani national,” the officer added.
