Months after a Pakistani woman entered India illegally through Nepal, forged her identity to live with her boyfriend in Bengaluru and was later arrested, the police are in the process of deporting her back, an officer privy to the matter said on Tuesday.
The 19-year-old woman, identified as Iqra Jeevani from Pakistan’s Hyderabad had come in contact with Uttar Pradesh native Mulayam Singh Yadav, who was working as a security guard in Bengaluru through an online game, said an investigating officer, privy to the matter.
Yadav had invited her to come to India, said the officer. In September, she entered the country and was living in a labour camp in Bengaluru with a fake Aadhar Card until she was arrested in January, said the officer.
While Jeevani was sent to the custody of Foreigners Regional Registration Officers (FRRO), there are several Pakistani women staying in coastal Karnataka’s Bhatkal after legally marrying in India. They have either received their citizenship or are awaiting them.
Even though the tradition of marrying women from Karachi in Bhatkal has been long standing, the strict laws, particularly after the terror cases since the 1990s, have made the lives of these women difficult.
Earlier, on January 6, a Karnataka court had sentenced a Pakistani woman and her Indian husband to prison for visa violation. The Karwar district sessions court sentenced Nasira Parveen to six-month imprisonment, while her husband Mohammad Iliyas will be jailed for a month. The two were also asked to pay a fine of ₹10,000 each.
The couple were imprisoned after Ilyas took Parveen to New Delhi to get her visa extended without informing the jurisdictional Bhatkal police station and the FRRO of Karwar on June 17, 2014. A case was registered against the duo at the Bhatkal City police station for violating the visa norms.
The strict law enforcement has made families keep the marriage alliances with Pakistanis a secret. “Before Partition, many Muslim families of Nawayath community had business links with Karachi and in other parts of Pakistan. Once the Partition happened, many families and friends were divided because of the border. To keep these relations going, the practice of marrying women from Karachi began. Most of them apply for Indian citizenship after the marriage,” said a senior officer from the state intelligence department, who didn’t want to be named.
In the 1990s, however, the fate of the town, changed following a political murder. “The murder of a popular RSS leader Dr U Chittaranjan, who was the first MLA to be assassinated while in office, changed the town’s political climate. This murder, over a period of time, led to communal tensions and eventually led to the creation of terrorists like Yasin and Riyaz; and the rise of leaders like Anant Kumar Hegde,” the officer added.
As the town’s name started getting associated with terror, the approval for citizenship of many Pakistani brides from Bhatkal became difficult.
“I’m not certain about the exact numbers, but there are around 70 applications for citizenship which have been pending before the home ministry’s office in Bengaluru since 1992. As per our records, there are 16 women of Pakistan nationality living in Bhatkal town of Uttara Kannada district on long-term visas. Of them, 14 are married to Indians and most of their children are born in India,” said a senior police officer from Uttara Kannada district, on anonymity.
But for the families the wait for citizenship is daunting. Javeed (name changed), whose wife is from Pakistan says that due to the visa restrictions travelling within the country itself is difficult. “We have to take permission from the police if we have to travel. We have been going to multiple offices and multiple police verifications have been done, but her request for citizenship hasn’t been processed yet,” he said.
But the police say that the recent developments over the years have made the process even more difficult. The Pakistani wife of a suspected terror operative Syed Ismail Afaq, who is now in jail for supplying explosive material that Indian Mujahideen (IM) used in bomb strikes across India, was deported on October 7, 2019.
“Her name was Arsala Abeer… she had crossed the one-month deadline that the Union home ministry had set for her to return to her home country. The ministry of external affairs rejected her visa renewal application in August after her husband’s arrest. She was living in India after periodically renewing her two-year visa following her marriage with Afaq in 2006. This made our renewal and process for citizenship requests even more strict,” the officer added.