Cell D2 was the Indian cell, and it remained empty for days after the occupants left on the morning of Friday, 15 April 2016. The rusty double bunker beds lay in the haphazard state they were when the Indians gladly vacated the cell that was home to them for 21 months.
Pradeep Kumar was grateful to leave the precincts of Okaka prison behind, and breathe the air of freedom outside the imposing walls of the yard. He was tired of being commanded by a bell like a schoolboy who should be back in his class or out on the playground, as the case may be.
Only that this was not a school. This was a prison. He couldn’t go where he wanted to go. He couldn’t do what he wanted to do. He couldn’t say what he wanted to say because nobody was listening to him. He could only wait and pray for some kind of intervention.
Kumar, tall and lanky, walked with the grace of a tired horse. The shock of hair on his head stood out like a face cap over the frown that had become permanent on his face. He was just fed up with waiting. If anything was happening somewhere about his case, he wanted to know. But nothing was worse than the absolute silence from the courts.
Every morning, Pradeep would be the first to take a stroll from his cell to the small oversight outpost in front of the chapel, rest his back against the hard wood, and hang his legs. He was always grateful for the fresh air and the open view of the prison yard. It was better than the hot confinement of the cell. He would take his place outside, sitting on the low wall of the structure, and watch the other Indians walk towards the rendezvous for one more interminable stretch of waiting.
He would be there when the inmates due for court that day begin to saunter into the church, wiping their slippers on the mat at the door and hurrying to bow at the altar. Kumar could tell how many inmates go to court every day, if he took time to count them as they filed out to the gate, led by the bald-headed prison clerk.
He had been in the Indian Navy, and loved to sail. In all his life spent at sea, he said, he had never faced the kind of humiliation he endured in prison. He had a deep, grumpy voice, and when he spoke in slow unaccustomed English, he sounded like rocks falling upon each other in a cave.
Kumar believes that there are international maritime laws, and the Nigerian Navy flouted them. Even more seriously, he was convinced that there was something grievously wrong with the Nigerian system of justice. Otherwise, why was it taking so long, the better part of two years, to call a case?
His anxiety was shared by other members of the MT Maro crew. Joyful Rongmei, for one, could not believe that he had been locked up like a common criminal for so long. He had been behind bars for almost two years now. ‘That is a precious time of my life gone just like that with me doing nothing’, said the chief cook of the motor tanker arrested for lifting petroleum products on Nigerian territorial waters.
Rongmei was one of the sixteen-man crew on board the ship. The vessel was reportedly arrested on 22 July 2014, at Brass terminal port. The crew were handed over to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) by the Nigerian Navy for investigation, charged with incomplete papers and alleged bunkering.
‘But this was an empty vessel heading to Cameroun for the scrap heap’, said Rongmei, wearing his trademark blue T-shirt branded at the back with the legend of Dong Woo, the Precision Company Limited. It is the most prominent thing in sight as he stands ahead in church at the Chapel of Mercy on Sunday mornings. He is the only Christian amongst the lot of Indians in the yard.
Rongmei hails from Assam State, East India, close to the Chinese border so that he looked more like a China man, slit-eyes and all, than an Indian. His most outstanding physical asset may well be his hair, every strand erect at all times like the fur of an angry cat.
‘The Nigerian Navy arrested us, suspecting us of bunkering. All our passports and CDC or Continued Discharge Certificates, to say nothing of the Marine Service Book were collected by the EFCC. It’s all so annoying’, he said.
On his part, Manoj Kumar will sue the Federal Government of Nigeria for not complying with international maritime laws, if he has enough money to hire the best legal mind the world can provide. He is resolved so to do when he regains freedom because he is upset that he was in prison custody at Okaka, Yenagoa, for almost two years.
Manoj Kumar wants the President to know this. That’s why he was very responsive to the name of Buhari every time he heard it on radio. That was the only reason he bothered to listen to any station on the transistor set in his cell. He wanted to know if the president had said anything about clemency for the Indians locked up in a Nigerian jail, especially because word reached him that the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, had made direct overtures to President Buhari, pleading for their release.
He speaks the Indian national language, Hindi, with the fluidity of a running tap. He hails from Hyderabad, close to Mumbia, in South India. He is upset that hearing in his case is slow. He recalls that the court sat last on 26 February 2015, and then on 17 December 2015, eleven months apart, and then there was no more news. No new date was fixed until the fateful transfer of the judge and the case.
‘He said: The courts gave repeated dates but never sat. But this is our going year, and we will get back home to India again by God’s grace’. That hope was shared by every member of the MT Maro crew, and repeated like a silent prayer in each individual heart.
The occupants of the Indian cell were preparing a big pot of yellow rice and fried eggs for dinner that evening on three stoves that heated up the cell, but no one could be bothered. It was important to get the meal ready quickly, and proceed with the packing. It was their last night. They were leaving Okaka prison the following day.
At a corner of the cell, Manoj and Puran Yadav were slapping balls of chapatti in their open palms into flat round shapes that would be roasted on the stoves into edible cakes. Ajay Kumar, obviously the youngest among the Indians at age 23, sat on the bottom bunker of his bed space, trying to concentrate on the game of draught he was playing with his favourite partner.
He was doing his best to contain the excitement bubbling inside him. This was a long awaited eventuality, and the news had come suddenly, just when they thought no one would listen to their case again. He couldn’t wait to walk through that formidable iron gate, and out into the free world.
The case had been transferred to Calabar, they said. He didn’t know where Calabar was, but he was sure that the long drive by road would do him a world of good. Otherwise, Ajay Kumar was a sad man. He had good reason to feel so. For 21 months in all, he had been locked up inside Okaka prison, Yenagoa, with no idea as to when he would leave the high walls of the prison behind, and sail back to the wide, open fields of India, his beloved home land.
Ajay had become so anxious about going back to India that his temper was becoming shorter by the day. He had become as irritable as a bee in the neighbouring cell. His temper only came under control when he was pushing pawns across the board and winning the game.
No one appeared to be doing anything about his case. No one seemed to care. This was Ajay’s greatest headache. Justice, as far as he was concerned, was crawling at the patient pace of a snail. Wiping the occasional tear drop from the corner of his eye, his face aflush with melancholy, Ajay would recall how he came to be incarcerated in the medium security prison along with his case mates. It was a long story, and he would have to start from the beginning.
