2 Punjabis among 8 Indians acquitted in Nigeria in crude oil pilferage case

JALANDHAR: Eight Indian youths, including two from Punjab, languishing in a Nigerian jail since November 2012 after being accused of crude oil pilferage from a ship where they were working, have been acquitted while the captain and assistant captain of the vessel have been held guilty. The convicted Indians are Captain Shailesh Kumar Singh, who hails from Uttar Pradesh and Assistant Captain Chandra Shekhar Sharma, who is from Rajasthan.

Rajya Sabha MP of BJP, Avinash Rai Khanna, who had taken up the matter with Indian government after it was brought to his notice, besides raising the issue in the Parliament, said Gagan Bhardwaj, one of the 8 youths acquitted in the case, who is from Hoshiarpur, called him up. The other Punjabi youth freed in the case is Sarabjot Singh from Gurdaspur.

The other Indian youths who were also acquitted include Ajay Kumar, Asraf Ali, Dharmaraj Kumar Bhardwaj, Sanjeev Kumar Bhardwaj, Nimesh and Aurobindo. Khanna said all of them would be returning to India next week. They were arrested by the Nigerian navy on November 25, 2012, and were charged for pilfering crude oil while working on the ship. However, they claimed that they were innocent and were falsely implicated.

Meanwhile, MP Khanna said he was seeking details of the two convicted Indians also, including the charges and evidence against them and the conditions they were being kept in Nigeria. "Gagan had been telling me from there that they were living in a miserable condition in the jail," he said.