Family's 'deserter' shame lifted

By Asit Jolly
BBC correspondent in Chandigarh

The men disappeared during the 1999 Kargil conflict

An Indian corporal branded a deserter after he went missing five years ago has resurfaced as a Pakistani prisoner, removing the shame his Punjab family had been forced to endure.

Corporal Jagseer Singh was taken prisoner during the Kargil war in 1999 with another soldier, Mohammed Arif.

Their disappearance could not be explained and the Indian army listed them as deserters.

Then last month Corporal Singh was allowed to write home from jail in the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi.

Every day I dream that Jagseer has come back home and I am holding him close Chhoto Kaur, Corporal Singh's mother

He told the full story of how he had been taken prisoner.

Corporal Singh, of the 108th Engineers Regiment, went missing on 17 September 1999 after he was taken prisoner by Pakistani troops while he was engaged in a mine-clearing operation in the mountainous Kargil sector in Indian-administered Kashmir.

Corporal Singh said the colleague taken prisoner with him, Mohammed Arif, was with him in the Rawalpindi jail.

The corporal said as Indian soldiers they had not been allowed either consular access or legal redress of any kind.

Wife flees

Back in his ancestral village of Kot Bhai in India's northern Punjab state, his family had suffered ridicule and harassment.

The people of Punjab province take great pride in contributing to the nation's military tradition.

Corporal Singh's brother Jagmeet - the family suffered humiliation

Local police not only registered a case against the missing soldier but also repeatedly subjected his parents, wife and brother to bouts of interrogation.

The soldier's father, Gurdev Singh, died humiliated with his son listed as a deserter.

The corporal's young wife, Jaswinder Kaur, abandoned their infant child, Saroj, who was born after Corporal Singh went missing, and went home to her parents.

Saroj is being brought up by Corporal Singh's widowed mother, Chhoto Kaur.

It was Ms Kaur who last month received the letter from Pakistan.

She said it was almost as if her god had forgiven her.

Now the Indian army has re-designated Jagseer Singh and Mohammed Arif as prisoners of war.

But Chhoto Kaur says she knows of no official efforts to get her son repatriated.

She says: "Every day I dream that Jagseer has come back home and I am holding him close to soothe my aching heart.

"But then I wake up to begin another day of waiting and hoping that the government will do something."

She has now decided to take matters into her own hands.

Helped by a local legislator, Manpreet Singh Badal, she has written to Indian President APJ Kalam asking him to intervene personally to bring her son home.