The death sentence of 15 Indians was commuted to life imprisonment by the Emir of Kuwait in 2017, the government informed the Lok Sabha on April 4.
The sentences of 119 Indians were also decreased through an “Amiri Decree,” Minister of State for External Affairs VK Singh said in parliament, PTI reported.
“The Government of India, through its missions abroad and through bilateral mechanism regularly takes up cases of Indian nationals lodged in foreign jails with the concerned authorities for taking a sympathetic view of all such cases, including in the Middle East countries,” Singh said.
The sentences of 53 Indian convicts out of the 119 was reduced from life imprisonment to 20 years. While 22 of them were immediately released, the sentence of 18 Indian prisoners was reduced to three quarters. The sentence for 25 prisoners was reduced by half, while it was reduced by a quarter for one of them.
The charges for most prisoners were associated with narcotics, drugs trading or consumption, theft, robbery, and fraud, among others. The 15 prisoners whose death sentences were commuted to life imprisonment were sentenced for drug-related charges, Arab Times reported in September last year.
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj had then thanked the Emir of Kuwait, HH Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Jaber Al Sabah for the kind gesture. She had also said that the Indian embassy in Kuwait will provide assistance to the Indians. “Indian mission in Kuwait will provide all possible assistance to the Indian nationals being released from the prison,” Swaraj had tweeted in September last year while making the announcement on the social media.
About 7,850 Indians were housed in jails abroad as of Feb. 28, 2018. The highest number of Indians is in Saudi Arabia prisons, Singh had said on March 7 in Lok Sabha. “As per the information available with the ministry, the number of Indian prisoners in foreign jails is 7,850 and the number of Indians who have completed their jail terms is 360 as of 28.02.2018,” Singh said.
In 2017, 506 Indians were in prison in Kuwait, while Saudi Arabia was at the top of the list with 2,046 Indians jailed, followed by the United Arab Emirates (1,376), Nepal (852) and Pakistan (468).
Strong privacy laws in many countries is one of the reasons behind local authorities’ stance of not sharing information about prisoners unless the particular person gives consent to disclosure of the information.