Pakistan has agreed to release an Indian round-the-world cyclist, Vikas Singh, jailed for three years after entering the country from Afghanistan without a visa, an official said on Wednesday. The release, in response to an Indian request, has been ordered as a gesture of goodwill ahead of the upcoming summit between Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, he said.
"We have decided to release him and the orders have been conveyed to prison authorities in the North West Frontier Province," said a senior interior ministry official. Cyclist Vikas Singh would return to India on Thursday, the official who did not want to be named said.
Singh was sentenced to three years in prison after he crossed into Pakistan from Afghanistan without valid travel documents in May.
"The step is taken as a goodwill gesture ahead of the Indo-Pakistan summit," he said.
Musharraf and Vajpayee are due to meet in Agra on July 15. Singh has spent the last 14 years cycling across 58 countries on a peace mission before he entered Pakistan via the Torkham border. He had earlier been denied a transit visa by the Pakistani embassy in Kabul.
He was picked up by border guards and taken to Peshawar where Judge Arshad Majeed sentenced him on May 31.
Singh left India on his bicycle in November 1987, telling his family he would be back in 25 years.
Bureau Report