Indian spy jailed in Pakistan returns home

WAGAH, India: An Indian man who spent six years in jail for spying after travelling to meet a woman in Pakistan returned home on Tuesday.

Hamid Nehal Ansari illegally crossed into Pakistan from Afghanistan in 2012, and was convicted for spying and forging documents in 2015.

He told court officials that he came to see a woman in northern Pakistan he befriended on Facebook, his lawyer Qazi Muhammad Anwar told AFP.

But police were waiting for him at the woman's house and arrested him on the spot, Anwar said.

Ansari returned through an overland border crossing near Lahore and northern India´s Amritsar city on Tuesday afternoon.

An AFP photojournalist at the border crossing said that Ansari was received by his waiting family members on the Indian side of the frontier.

Local media showed Ansari hugging his mother and bowing to touch his head to the ground after crossing over to India.

Ansari and his family were escorted away by local security officials before they could speak with the waiting journalists.

"It is a matter of great relief, especially for the family members, that six years of incarceration of the Indian civilian in (a) Pakistan jail is coming to an end," the Indian foreign ministry said on Monday.

Arch-rivals Pakistan and India have fought three major wars since independence from Britain in 1947. They routinely arrest each other´s citizens on spying charges.