New Delhi: Ansar Burney, the leading Pakistani human rights activist who fought for the release of Indian death row prisoners Kashmir Singh and Sarabjit Singh in Pakistan, was on Friday night deported from Delhi back to Dubai, sources said.
Burney, who was the Human Rights Minister in the interim government in Pakistan, was deported back from the Indira Gandhi International Airport by an Emirates Airways flight at around 2030 hours because of a "look-out" notice against him, they said.
Home Ministry officials, however, could not say who had issued the notice against Burney and in what connection.
Sources in the Ministry of External Affairs said Burney's deportation could have been due to "some mistake".
Airport sources said the reason given to Burney for deportation was that he had wrongly mentioned his port of embarkation.
Burney told CNN-IBN, "When I arrived at Delhi, the officer at the Delhi airport was very happy to meet me. He then asked to me to wait. After a while he took me to the immigration office and half an hour after that I got to know that they have plans to deport me and send me back to Dubai. I tried to tell the officers that I have come to India for important meetings, talks about prisoner exchange. I told them that I have come to India earlier without any objections from the Indian authority."
"I care for all the prisoners not just for Sarabjit. The Government of India should explain to Indians on what they have done to me," he added.
Soon after his deportation, Burney's son shot off an e-mail to some journalists in Delhi informing them of his father's deportation.
Burney successfully secured the release of Kashmir Singh, who spent 35 years on death row in a Lahore jail, on February 20 this year as President Pervez Musharraf approved his mercy petition filed on the Indian's behalf by the Human Rights Ministry.
Burney is also playing a key role in efforts to save Sarabjit Singh, who was charged with triggering bomb blasts in Lahore in 1990, from the gallows.
Interestingly, Burney had visited India in April this year and met Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil and Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon on April 8. A few days prior to that, he had met Sarabjit's family in Amritsar.
Sarabjit was arrested in Rawalpindi on espionage charges in 1973, was sentenced to death by an army court.
It was Burney's efforts that led to Pakistan government's indefinitely postponing Sarabjit's execution earlier this month.
(With inputs from PTI)
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