4,000 Pakistanis go `missing' in UP; police apathetic

AMIT SHARMA

LUCKNOW, JUNE 16: The nabbing of Zafar, a suspected Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) agent, in Kanpur recently has once again brought into focus the issue of Pakistani nationals living in the state. There are nearly 4,000 such people who are living in UP with expired visas. Compounding the problem is that the police have no trace of such foreign nationals owing to lacunae in the existing rules. Senior police officials do not deny that many in the list of missing Pakistani nationals might be operating as vital links to the ISI which has considerable roots in the state. Though Zafar, who was arrested by the police in Kanpur was not a `missing' national but a deserter from the Indian Army, officials here believe that a closer scrutiny of persons who have overstayed after their visas expired would yield startling revelations. ``We have to rely on the good intentions of any person coming to the state from another country. As per the rules,the visiting person himself should inform the police in districts of his orher presence and get the duration of stay specified in the visa registered there. If anybody is coming here with wrong intentions, why should that person bother to get registered?'' questions a senior Intelligence official. The police have recovered two passports bearing different names but with the same photograph from the possession of Zafar who worked in the Signals Corps at Jammu for almost 10 years and was declared a deserter in 1998. Ever since, the police claim, he had been passing on vital information to the Pakistan, a pointer to which is the long phone calls made by him fom PCOs to Karachi. ``Many of these missing nationals have also been doing the same thing over years,'' the official pointed out. The police headquarters have been dispatching letters to district police chiefs every now and then expressing concern over such people who have gone underground, but these have now been reduced to a routine affair with no one in the police department showing any interest in tracing them.

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