Chishty bonds with members of his brother’s family in Ajmer on Wednesday. (PTI)

Jaipur, April 11: The release came in the afternoon, but the ailing old man wouldn’t call it freedom.

Not yet.

“Only when I am home in Pakistan and am with my wife and children, will my freedom be complete,” the 80-year-old Pakistani professor said, asked what freedom meant to him.

“It is still not complete freedom as yet,” he told The Telegraph from Ajmer.

Syed Mohammed Khalil Chishty walked out of Ajmer Central Jail today after nearly 20 years of trial and eventual imprisonment in a murder case, two days after the Supreme Court had granted the India-born former professor of virology bail on humanitarian grounds.

While granting bail on Monday, the court had agreed to hear Chishty’s plea to be allowed to return to Karachi but asked his lawyers to file a separate petition.

The bail came a day after Chishty’s case came up during the lunch Prime Minister Manmohan Singh hosted for visiting Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari.

Chishty was a teenager studying in Pakistan when Partition happened, and chose to stay back while his mother and younger brother Jameel remained in Ajmer.

The PhD from Edinburgh University walked out of jail at 4:15pm after his brother furnished two bail bonds of Rs 50,000 each and a personal surety of Rs 1 lakh.

Jail superintendent V.K. Mathur said Chishty left in a jail ambulance and his brother and other relatives came to receive him. Although he suffers from multiple ailments, Chishty seemed happy.

“I am not a free bird yet but I am happy to be out of jail…. Now, I wish to go to my country as soon as possible and meet my family members,” he said.

His ordeal began when he came to Ajmer in March 1992 to meet his mother and got sucked into a family feud that led to a man being shot dead. He has been in Ajmer since.

Chishty was arrested with three of his cousins though his family claims he was not at the scene when the shots were fired.

In January last year, Chishty was handed a life term. An appeal in Rajasthan High Court was rejected as the court declined to show any leniency on grounds of his age and being a foreign national.

The virologist, who has had two heart attacks and cannot walk without help since he fractured a hip, spent the whole of his 15 months in jail in the prison hospital.

“I cannot see from my left eye, it needs correction as it is affected by paralysis,” he said after coming out of prison. “I am physically unfit but mentally fully aware. Freedom for me is something which is more about mind than about being physically free.”

If allowed to go to Pakistan, would he ever return to India, especially Ajmer, to offer prayers at the dargah of Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti?

“I am the son of the Aravallis,” said Chishty, who was born to a family of khadims — priests at the famous dargah of the Sufi saint whom they consider their ancestor. “I can never forget India and will come back again and again.”

Pak gesture

Pakistan will release 34 Indian prisoners, including a fisherman suffering from cancer, this week as part of steps to normalise relations between the two countries, a PTI report from Islamabad said.

The prisoners — 26 fishermen and eight persons arrested on charges like illegally crossing the border — are expected to be repatriated via Wagah on April 13, Indian and Pakistani officials said.

However, leading Pakistani rights activist Ansar Burney has offered to immediately airlift Samant Lakshman Bambhaniya, a fisherman from Gujarat, who is suffering from cancer of the leg.

“I had taken up Bambhaniya’s case with the President and the Prime Minister and would like to see that he gets home as quickly as possible,” Burney told PTI.