Team to broker Indian prisoners release

HYDERABAD: To secure the release of Indians jailed in the United Arab Emirates, a team of three members  drawn from various Indian migrant councils will negotiate with the Indian embassy in the UAE and jail officials there.Speaking at a press conference here on Friday, Voice of Indian Emigrants president Raghu Ram Vallamsetty said, “On the occasion of UAE National Day (December 2), we are going to visit the Dubai and Sharjah jails and negotiate with the officials there the release of our prisoners in conformity with Arab laws.”The team, apart from Raghu Ram,  consists of Banda Surender Reddy (chairman of the state unit of All India Forward Bloc) and P Narayana Swamy (president of Migrants Rights Council).The team, which will spend five days in the Emirates, will negotiate mainly on two issues: to bring back Indian prisoners on exchange of prisoners and to request the Indian embassy to arrange blood money (money paid to the next of kin of a murder victim as a fine as per Arab law) for Indian prisoners in the UAE. The team will also visit the labour camps in the Emirates to understand and discuss the problems of Indian migrants.It will also try to get the accurate number of Indian convicts and undertrials by visiting all the prisons. According to them, there are about 5,000 Indian prisoners (convicts and undertrials) languishing in the UAE jails.According to the records of Migrants Rights Council, about 4 lakh people from Andhra Pradesh are working as labourers in various companies in the UAE, which is a federation of seven emirates _ Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, Ajman, Fujaira, Ras al-Khaimah and Umm al-Quwain. Of the migrant labour force, 90 percent hail from the Telangana region.Penta Vijaya (26) from Mahaboobnagar district said her husband P Srinivas had gone to Dubai for work seven and a half years ago and allegedly murdered his roommate. He was imprisoned for 27 years as per the  UAE law. Now, she is requesting the state and central governments to bring back her husband as she has two children to rear and no one to take care of her.