Biotruck: News update

This is a message from Andy Pag:

So many people have been mailing to ask what's going on, so to update you all:

I am free to move around India on Bail until the 23rd of this month when I have to appear in court again.

My hope is that the police will have finished my case file by then, but they are entitled to take 90 days over it and are waiting for Thuraya to provide call details from my phone to corroborate that I didn't use it in India. Their monitoring equipment detected my phone being used at strange times of the day, which I am sure it was not.

I can't explain this discrepancy other than by an error in the detection equipment. Investigating officers have told me that this discrepancy is the only cause for suspicion left.

Getting the call records could take 5 days, 10 days, 30 days, 90 days, it might never happen. I don't think Thuraya are obliged to pass the details on.

I'm still facing an anti-terrorism charge which carries a 10 year prison sentence. There is a hope that if the police get the phone call records they will drop the anti-terror charge. No guarantees of this but my lawyer seems confident this will be the case.

The other two charges are punitive, that means they carry a fine but no prison time. (€2 for one, and €20 for the other), and can be decided instantly by a judge.

My hope is that this is all resolved as quickly as possible, and that the police drop the anti-terror charge (the information technology act section 70) and submit the case file by the 22nd, so this can all be over by the 23rd.

Obviously the police have to be sure that I am not a security risk, and while I think I have proved it already beyond reasonable doubt, the call records would prove it once and for all beyond ALL doubt. I know they are doing all they can to get the matter sorted.

Come on Thuraya, get your finger out.

UPDATE: Thuraya did, in fact, get their finger out and provided proof that the sat phone hadn't been used in either Pakistan or India.

As of 26th Feb, the India police had still not filed charges and Andy has been asking everyone to put pressure on the authorities via email - see his website: www.biotruckexpedition.com and sign today!