Pakistan to release 360 Indian prisoners as conflict eases

Karachi: Pakistan will release 360 Indian prisoners this month, the foreign office said on Friday, as the nuclear-armed neighbours scale back from a conflict that prompted world powers to urge restraint.

Tensions had been running high since the Jaish-e-Mohammed orchestrated the 14 February Pulwama attack in Jammu and Kashmir but rose dramatically on 27 February, when India launched an air strike in Balakot, Pakistan, on what it said was a militant training base.

The following day Pakistan shot down an Indian fighter jet and captured its pilot Abhinandan Varthaman who was later released.

“Pakistan has decided that 360 Indian prisoners—having breakup of 355 fishermen and five civilians, who have completed their term of sentence, will be released," Mohammad Faisal, spokesman for the Pakistan Foreign Office, told reporters.

He said the prisoners would be released in four batches starting from 8 April.

Due to the rocky relations between the two sides, prisoners who have completed their jail terms often languish in each other's jails for months, if not years, afterwards.

According to the lists exchanged by both sides in January, there are 347 Pakistani prisoners in Indian jails, 249 of whom are what the spokesman described as civilians and 98 fishermen.

There are 537 Indian prisoners in Pakistani jails, 483 of whom are fishermen.

“We hope that India will reciprocate this,” the foreign office spokesman said.

Pakistan's F-16 fighter jets have all been accounted for, the US-based Foreign Policy magazine said, citing US officials, contradicting an Indian air force assessment that it had shot down one of the jets in the February standoff.