After 18 years in India, Pak national Riyaz deported; leaves wife, 3 children behind

Jammu and Kashmir Police today deported several Pakistan citizens staying in their state to Pakistan through the land route from the Attari-Wagah joint check post (JCP).

The Jammu and Kashmir Government took this step in the wake of orders issued by the Centre instructing all Pakistani citizens to leave India before May 1 in the aftermath of the Pahalgam terror attack.

Ferried in police buses, the deportees were brought from Handwara, Kupwara, Baramulla, Budgam and other districts of the mountainous state.

As soon as the police opened the doors of the bus outside the gates of the JCP, Rajouri’s Sarah Khan rushed out and raised her voice for mediapersons to hear. Carrying her new-born, Sarah, a Pakistan national, said she was woken up at midnight and brought to Attari for repatriation. She said she gave birth to a son 14 days ago through a caesarean operation and doctors had advised her against travel. But she was brought hundreds of kms away from her “hometown”.

Already the mother of six-year-old boy Umar Hayat Khan, who is also a Pakistan national, Sarah had been issued a two-year-long term visa (LTV) which expires in July 2026. Her husband Aurangzeb Khan said he married Sarah, his cousin, in 2017. She was born and brought up in Mirpur, which falls in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir as her parents had migrated to the place from India in 1965.

Riyaz Khan from Kupwara said his father was in the Indian Army and he had contested the election of District Development Council, Kupwara, yet he was being deported. A resident of a border village in Kupwara, he had inadvertently crossed over to Pakistan when he was 12 years old. In 2007, when he was 24 years old, he returned to India through the Attari land route.

After 18 years, he was being deported to Pakistan, leaving behind his wife and three children. From behind the meshed window of the police bus, he showed his Aadhaar card to prove his nationality.

Radha, who claims to be an Indian national, said she was picked up from her residence in Kathua district at midnight. Claiming to possess all documents to show her citizenship, she said that despite those she was being sent to Pakistan.

Radha, who is in her early 60s, added that she does not have any relative in Pakistan and all her sons and daughters reside in Jammu region. She stated that she was born in Pakistan where her parents used to stay. They crossed over to India long after Partition. Accompanying them, she also arrived here. She no longer remembers where her parents used to stay in Pakistan.