17 prisoners on death row in UAE freed, fly to India

Published Tuesday, February 12, 2013

By Joseph George

Seventeen Indians who were on a death row in Sharjah prison were freed on Monday night and have since travelled to India.

“A release order was issued yesterday and we managed to organize tickets and they all were deported to India,” said Bindu S. Chettur of Mohamed Salman Advocates and Legal Consultants.

The group reached the airport at around 12:30am last night and left on a flight to New Delhi. “They would reach Amritsar by Tuesday afternoon and will finally be reunited with their family,” she added.

The Indian men, 16 from Punjab and one from Haryana, were arrested following the killing of a Pakistani national Misri Nazir Khan. Three others were seriously injured in a fight between two gangs of bootleggers in the Saaja industrial area in January 2009. The Sharjah Court of First Instance awarded all the arrested men death sentence.

The death sentence was quashed in 2011 following the payment of blood money (diya) by SP Singh, a UAE-based businessmen and the owner of Grand Hotel.

However, the men continued to be in prison after one of the injured filed a case demanding compensation of Dh1million.

“The Sharjah Civil court last month awarded a compensation of Dh100,000 to the injured man. There were no more appeals and the release order was issued,” said Chettar.

(Home page image courtesy Shutterstock)

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