New Delhi, Mar 8 (UNI) India Pilot Muralidharan, who went missing after the 1971 war but was reported alive in a Pakistan jail by a newspaper, is in the list of 74 missing defence personnel who Pakistan says are not in its jails.

The list was given to Pakistan long back but it has denied outright that it had any of these personnel in its captivity, Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee told the Rajya Sabha while replying to supplementaries during Question Hour.

The Foreign Minister said he had taken up the issue with President Pervez Musharraf when he visited Pakistan in January, as the families of the defence personnel have been making frequent representations to the government for any information on them.

He said President Musharraf had agreed to the visit of a delegation of families of missing Indian defence personnel to Pakistan next month to verify for themselves whether their kin were in jails as Prisoners of War (PoWs) in that country.

The two countries had also agreed to set up a committee on prisoners comprising retired judges of the superior judiciary to visit jails in the two countries and propose steps to ensure humane treatment of POWs and expedite release of prisoners who have complete their terms, he added.

UNI