Pakistan releases Indian spy after 3 years of detention

PAKISTAN said on Monday it was releasing an Indian spy following the completion of a three-year sentence handed down on charges of espionage.

Hamid Ansari was being released from jail and repatriated to India, Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mohammad Faisal, wrote on Twitter.

Ansari had illegally entered Pakistan and was involved in anti-state crimes and document forgery, the spokesman said.

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The spokesman did not share details of the repatriation.

Ansari had reportedly befriended a woman in the north-western district of Kohat via social media. He was arrested in 2012 when he crossed the border with fake documents from Afghanistan.

A military court convicted him on charges of espionage and anti-state activities in December 2015, and he was sentenced to three years imprisonment.

Ansari denied the charges and claimed that he visited Pakistan to help a female Facebook friend in Kohat, who was in trouble.

India and Pakistan, both nuclear-capable South Asian nations with a history of bitter relations, routinely accuse each other of espionage.

In 2018, a Pakistani military court sentenced a former Indian Naval Officer, Kulbhushan Jadhav, to death after finding him guilty of espionage and fomenting unrest in the south-western province of Balochistan.

Sarabjit Singh, another alleged Indian spy, who was sentenced to death in 1991, was killed in his jail cell in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore by fellow inmates in 2013.