Wagah , May 10, : India on Saturday handed over the dead body of Mohammad Akram ,a Pakistani national who had died at the Guru Nanak Dev Hospital in Amritsar on April 26 following a severe illness.

Border Security Force officials handed over his dead body to the Pakistani Rangers at the Attari international border.

Akram was admitted in the hospital with pneumonia He died after his pneumonia culminated into septicemia, K. S. Pannu, Deputy Commissioner of Amritsar, informed.

Akram, a resident of Faislabad was apprehended by police near Valtoha in the first week of February after he had illegally sneaked into India and was booked for violating the Passport Act.

He was an undertrial before being admitted to hospital.

Sources in Pakistan informed that family members of Akram had taken him to a mazaar (shrine) in Kasur where he was separated from them and had crossed into India, where he was arrested.

When asked why there had been a delay in the handing over of Akram's body to authorities in Pakistan, Pannu said it was essentially a procedural delay because permission had to be got from the Pakistan High Commission for a postmortem. Once that postmortem was conducted in the presence of human rights activists and a former commissioner of Amritsar, and a report forwarded to the Pakistan High commission, only then was permission given to hand over the body to Pakistan.

On March 10, India had handed over the dead body of another Pakistani national Mohammad Khalid , a resident of Dera Ismailabad, which falls under the Bharatpur police station of Lahore.

He had arrived in India on a cricket visa on April 15, 2005 to watch a cricket match at Mohali, but Khalid jumped his visa and disappeared in India . He was arrested from Faridabad on May 17, 2006 and was sent to Tihar jail. He had also developed some medical problem and was admitted in AIIMS where he breathed last on February 12,
2008.

It is pertinent to mention here that an Indian fishermen Laxman, the son of Kanji, had died in mysterious circumstances in Karachi's Landhi Jail.

Pakistan's rights activist Ansar Burney had claimed that Laxman had died of some abdominal problem. Laxman , 29 ,was arrested by Pakistan's coastal guards after his boat had entered Pakistan's territorial waters.

When Khalid's body was returned, it created a huge uproar in Pakistan. Anti-India demonstrations were held in Pakistan and politicians exploited the issue. (ANI)