About a week ago, a Qatar court commuted the death sentences of eight former Indian Navy personnel. The former Navy officers, employed by a Doha-based company, were arrested in August 2022 allegedly for espionage. This has brought to attention the issue of Indians incarcerated in jails abroad and the steps taken by the government to assist them in their legal battle.
Cases involving Indian prisoners in jails abroad, such as the one in Qatar, in which information about the charges has not been disclosed to the public so far, are rare. In countries such as Canada and the U.K., details about arrests are not made public due to strong privacy laws. However, details of most of the arrests of Indians abroad are in the public domain. Many involve fishermen who inadvertently crossed the international maritime boundary. In December last year, over 50 fishermen from Tamil Nadu and Puducherry were arrested by the Sri Lankan Navy. As per the latest data, 2,612 Indian fishermen were lodged in prisons across 10 countries — Iran (27), Sri Lanka (501), the UAE (5), Bangladesh (309), Bahrain (12), Myanmar (19), Pakistan (1060), Qatar (54), Saudi Arabia (564) and Seychelles (61) — between 2020 and 2022, for crossing the maritime border. Many were later repatriated.
As per the latest data, about 9,500 Indians are lodged in prisons across 89 nations (Chart 1). Notably, most Indian prisoners are in West Asian jails. Saudi Arabia (2,200 prisoners), the UAE (2,143), Qatar (752), Kuwait (410) and Bahrain (310) hold most of these prisoners. Nepal is the only other country in the list of the top six countries with over 1,200 Indian prisoners. Malaysia, Pakistan, the U.K., China, and the U.S. also hold a significant number of Indian prisoners.
