Pakistan releases Indian national Hamid Nihal Ansari from prison: Report

On Thursday, the Peshawar High Court gave the federal government a month deadline to complete his repatriation process.

Indian national Hamid Nihal Ansari was on Tuesday released from a Pakistani jail to be repatriated to India, six years after he was detained by the country's intelligence agencies and subsequently sentenced to three years' imprisonment for possessing a fake Pakistani identity card, according to a media report.

Ansari, a 33-year-old Mumbai resident, was lodged in the Peshawar Central Jail after being sentenced by the military court on December 15, 2015. His three-year jail term ended on December 15, 2018 but he was not able to leave for India as his legal documents were not ready.

On Thursday, the Peshawar High Court gave the federal government a month deadline to complete his repatriation process.

The Indian national was released from Mardan jail on Tuesday and was shifted to Islamabad for his onward journey to India, state-run Radio Pakistan reported.

Ansari went missing after he was taken into custody by Pakistani intelligence agencies and local police in Kohat in 2012 and finally in reply to a habeas corpus petition filed by his mother, Fauzia Ansari, the high court was informed that he was in custody of the Pakistan Army and was being tried by a military court.

He entered Pakistan from Afghanistan, reportedly to meet a girl he had befriended online.

Business Standard

Indian army surgical strike video released, shows ops against terror camps: TV channels

On September 29, 2016, the Indian Army announced that it attacked terrorists' camps along the Line of Control using ground forces.

Purported visuals of the Indian Army's cross-border operations against terrorists about two years ago were broadcast by television channels on Wednesday night.

News channels said the grainy footage on air showed gunfire and explosions targeting enemy camps in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, an operation that came in retaliation to a terrorist strike on an Indian Army camp and is widely known as surgical strikes.
The reports also said these videos, provided to TV channels by sources, were shot by drones using thermal imaging cameras.

Business Standard could not independently verify the authenticity of the videos but an official who was directly in charge of the operation confirmed that they were real.

“When the surgical strikes happened, my view was that the videos should have been released as proof. It is good that they have come out now,” Lt General D S Hooda (retd) told The Indian Express.

On September 29, 2016, the Indian Army announced that it attacked terrorists' camps along the Line of Control using ground forces. The act, which officials said inflicted “significant casualties” on terrorists, came after a deadly attack on a military base in Uri in Jammu and Kashmir on September 18 that year.

Pakistan rejected India's claims of having launched a surgical strike on terrorist camps in Pakistani territory.

In a book launched on the first anniversary of surgical strikes, an Army Major, who reportedly led the mission, said the return was the most difficult part and bullets fired by the enemy were so close that these were whistling past the ears.

Nawaz Sharif 'speaking Modi's words' on 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks: Top 10 developments

Calling him a modern-day Mir Jafar, Imran Khan said that Sharif was speaking the language of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and cooperating with the enemies of Pakistan

Pakistan's ousted prime minister  Nawaz Sharif set the cat among the pigeons after he publicly acknowledged that militant organisations are active in the country and questioned Islamabad's policy of allowing "non-state actors" to cross the border and "kill" people in Mumbai, in an apparent reference to the 2008 Mumbai attacks. In the wake of the remarks, the Pakistan Army is said to be 'extremely upset' with Sharif, who has come under attack for his statement, and will hold a high-level meeting on Monday to discuss the matter. Meanwhile, Sharif's party, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), has issued a statement claiming that his statement has been "grossly misinterpreted" by the Indian media.

Without naming  Mumbai attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed and Maulana Masood Azhar's militant organisations, the Jamaat-ud-Dawah and Jaish-e-Mohammad, Sharif had said in an interview: Militant organisations are active in Pakistan. "Call them non-state actors, should we allow them to cross the border and kill over 150 people in Mumbai? Explain it to me. Why can't we complete the trial," said Sharif.

New Delhi has long accused the Lashkar-e-Taiba of carrying out the attacks in Mumbai in 2008 with the help of ten well-armed terrorists. These attackers arrived on a boat from Karachi and, according to the Indian government, carried out the violent strikes across Mumbai in coordination with Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency. The attacks left 166 people dead.
The 26/11 case is being tried in an anti-terrorism court in Pakistan since 2009 but has hardly made any progress. India maintains that Pakistan has not kept its end of the bargain and sent the case to court without really investigating the conspiracy that led to the attacks. Islamabad, however, squarely blames New Delhi for not providing it with "solid evidence" against prime accused Hafiz Saeed and others.
Sharif, for his part, has been disqualified from holding public office for life by the Pakistan Supreme Court in the Panama Papers case.

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