FARIDKOT: The comment itself was quite innocuous. The voice tone was balanced and the expression clear and un-halting. And yet there was something conspiratorial about it.

“Indians have demonstrated double standards in the case of Ajmal Kasab. The Pakistani suspect gets four death sentences and the Indian suspects go free. It’s a shame for all Pakistanis and specially the government of Pakistan to keep quiet on this blatant injustice,’ said Afzal Hussain Shirazi. His statement seemed well-rehearsed and ended with a polite ‘thank you’. He then pushed away the microphone with the finality of someone who has said it all and won’t say another word.

He was sitting cross legged on a charpoy inside a shop selling herbal medicine. This is Faridkot – the otherwise nondescript village made famous by one of its youths, Ajmal Kasab, who had just been sentenced to death by a court in India for the Mumbai terror attacks of November 2008.

I’d criss-crossed through much of central and eastern Punjab to get to Okara. A majority of people I spoke to about Kasab, showed little knowledge of and interest in the subject. Even in Okara, some 35km from Faridkot, I ran into people who did not know the young man, much less the verdict against him.Finally, in Dipalpur, the town nearest to Faridkot, I met journalists in the local press club who advised me against proceeding to the village for my own safety, and offered instead to give me all the information I needed. It was there I’d first heard the argument, more or less in the same words, as those uttered by Shirazi.

Faridkot was taken over by intelligence agencies soon after the Mumbai attacks and arrest of the lone surviving perpetrator, Ajmal Kasab. At that time Islamabad was still denying that he was a citizen of Pakistan, and the Pakistani and international media was combing south Punjab from where, according to the initial reports, Ajmal Kasab came from.

Some of the earliest arriving media men – and at least one woman – were harassed by plainclothesmen and even detained by police, and a local journalist Mian Rabnawaz Joiya, was hounded and arrested for helping visiting journalists establish the fact that Ajmal Kasab indeed belonged to Faridkot.

In time Islamabad came round to owning up Ajmal Kasab as a citizen, even offered Indians help with the investigation.

Nearly a year and half later, the media returned to Faridkot last week to get the Kasab family’s and the villagers’ reaction to the death sentence awarded to Ajmal Kasab in India, and they found little if any change in the media policy of Faridkot handlers. Only, the spooks were not visible anymore, their duties transferred to police and a local politician.

There were reports that the Kasab family had been allowed to return to village, though not to their own home, but no one knew, or was willing to say where to find them. The family was once again whisked away by security agencies shortly after the media scrambled into Faridkot.

Joiya, who is president of Dipalpur Press Club, was still facilitating journalists wishing to visit Faridkot but he hadn’t set foot in the village himself since his traumatic incarceration, and dutifully fulfilled the requirement to inform the chief of city police of the comings and goings of journalists.

The officer for his part welcomed scribes to Dipalpur but asked them to be cautious because as he put it, people of Faridkot don’t like media attention. His binding advice was: take a police escort along or report to one Ghulam Mustafa Wattu, the former Union Council Nazim and resident of Faridkot who is carrying on the job of managing media from the start.

My ‘escort’ took me straight to his home on the main road that dissects the village. Wattu was on the phone, visibly happy at what he was hearing, and thanking profusely the person at the other end. “It was the intelligence officer. He has confirmed a job for my nephew here,” he told his audience proudly after putting down the phone.

Then he turned to another visiting journalist and continued his comment on the Indian justice system and the deafening silence of Pakistanis … Yes, the comment I’d heard in Dipalpur and one that was to be repeated by Shirazi a little later.Wattu’s modus operandi is simple. He won’t let the journalists venture into the village on their own, of course ‘for their own protection’. But some journalists I spoke to felt that the frequent unpleasant incidents between journalists and local residents, that are used to justify Wattu’s services, are in fact engineered by him. Whatever the truth, the journalists did feel insecure in Faridkot, especially venturing into the residential part of the village.

That left them with Wattu’s lounge and the bazaar – a strip of dozen or so shops on both sides of the road – to find their subjects to interview.

Majority of men I came across refused to answer any question, not just about Ajmal Kasab. The sweet shop guy has never heard of Ajmal. A couple of men who must be in Ajmal’s age group, are too shy to speak. The faithful walking out of the mosque point towards Wattu’s residence a few metres away and hurry past. And majority of passersby are ‘outsiders’.

Those who did speak to me invariably repeated the one argument I’d heard all day. The entire village it seemed – and Dipalpur town included – thought as one, or else someone was doing the thinking for them.

The only exception was two boys of around 15 years of age. I struck up a conversation with them on the roadside. They seemed friendlier than the rest.

I picked up the local newspaper and showed the front page picture to them. “Of course I know him”, conceded one, trying to avoid the censorial look from an older boy who had refused to speak to me earlier. “He looks more handsome now, no?” chipped in the other. “So what do you think of this fellow you knew, getting death sentence in India?” I asked. “I didn’t say I knew him. Just that I recognise him. And I don’t care if he is hanged or shot,” and both laughed out loud.