ISLAMABAD, 10 November 2005 — Pakistan protested to India yesterday after the son of a Pakistani Embassy worker in India was said to have been kidnapped and photographed with three corpses before being released.
Nineteen-year-old Roshan Ali was abducted and harassed by unidentified attackers in New Delhi late on Tuesday, Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
Pakistan summoned India’s acting high commissioner (ambassador) in Islamabad to the Foreign Office and a “strong protest was lodged with him condemning the premeditated and cowardly act,” the ministry added.
While he was detained at an unknown location, the teenager’s hands were “smeared with the fresh blood of three dead bodies lying in the room,” the statement said.
“He was forced to hold a large bloodstained knife in his hands and to stand next to the dead bodies. He was then photographed in various poses with the dead bodies,” it added.
Ali’s attackers stuffed into his pocket a threatening handwritten note addressed to his father and then took all his belongings before throwing him out of a vehicle after midnight, the statement said.
The note was addressed to his father and said that the teenager “should be taken out of Delhi within five days because the abductors had photographs that could send him to the gallows,” the ministry added.
The Pakistani Foreign Ministry had asked India to carry out an investigation.
It said the Indian diplomat had “expressed regrets over the unfortunate incident and assured that an investigation would be undertaken and the results shared with Pakistan.”
Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman Navtej Sarna said in New Delhi that the matter was being investigated.
“The alleged abduction of a dependent of an official of the Pakistan High Commission has been brought to our attention. The matter is being investigated,” Sarna said in a brief statement.
The Foreign Ministry later said police had investigated the matter and found the threatening note had been written by an Indian classmate of Ali, Rahul Sharma.
“Rahul Sharma has acknowledged that he wrote the note at Roshan Ali’s request and as dictated by him. According to Rahul Sharma, Roshan Ali said that he would use the note to scare some of his Pakistani friends,” the statement said.
It said that police investigation showed there was no “report of any incident of the kind alleged by Roshan Ali” around the area which is usually crowded.
“Rahul Sharma’s statement and the absence of any corroborative report on the alleged abduction clearly establishes that Roshan Ali’s story is fabricated,” the statement said, adding the rush to publicize the allegation was an attempt to “sensationalize it.”
— Additional input from AFP
