The story related to release of an Indian prisoner Kashmir Singh after spending 35 years on a death row in Lahore prison suddenly made me feel that cinema are mirror of the society.
In a blockbuster Bollywood movie Veer Zaara, Squadron Leader Veer Pratap Singh (Shah Rukh Khan) was framed by false cases and wrongly imprisoned in Pakistan jail for being an Indian spy.
In the film the Indian officer released after spending 22 long years in Pakistani jail with the help of Saamiya Siddqui (Rani Mukherjee), who was an idealistic Pakistani lawyer. Veer was fortunate enough to finding Saamia as messiah (angel) and was released after the court hearing his case, gave judgment in his favour and said that he was wrongly imprisoned on the charge of being Indian spy, which he was not and had not done any crime violating the Pakistani law.
Same is the case with Kashmir Singh (as with Veer in Veer Zaara), the alleged Indian spy, who had been languishing in Pakistani jail for the past 35 years after he was sentenced to death on the charge of espionage. He was arrested in Rawalpindi in 1973.
In place of Saamia Siddiqui (Pakistani lawyer in Veer Zaara) it was Ansar Burney, the Caretaker Human Rights Minister in Pakistan, who came as a messenger of God to save the life of Kashmir Singh. He found Singh during a visit to Lahore's Central Jail, and requested Musharraf to commute Singh’s death sentence and allow him to go home as goodwill gesture. Musharraf had accepted the Indian's mercy petition on humanitarian grounds and ordered his immediate release.
Shah Rukh Khan in Veer Zaara had reached almost to the stage of mental wreck, but in reality the alleged Indian spy, Kashmir Singh, who was awarded sentence to death by an army court, had become a mental wreck after long years of solitary confinement. After Burney's intervention, Singh was taken to hospital for treatment.
Like Veer, who was declared innocent by the Pakistani Court, the probe carried out by Burney’s Trust revealed that Singh was not an Indian agent, but a sepoy with Amritsar police. However, after losing his job in 1972 on disciplinary grounds, he started to smuggling and consequently was caught and detained in Rawalpindi.
The pain and sufferings can be easily viewed in the victim’s keen wife, his kith and kin, who sometimes even could not know his father or brother is alive or dead.
The unexpected release of Kashmir Singh at the age of 61 years after spending 34-year in various prisons in Pakistan would no doubt release some pain to his family.
At this juncture of incident I remember verses of a wise man, which says:
My life closed twice before its close; It yet remains to see If Immortality unveil A third event to me, So huge, so hopeless to conceive, As these that twice befell. Parting is all we know of heaven, And all we need of hell.
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