Supreme Court protects family facing deportation to Pakistan, asks authorities to verify documents

Staring at deportation to Pakistan, six members of a family from Jammu and Kashmir on Friday got a reprieve from the Supreme Court which asked the Centre not to take any coercive action against them.

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A Bench led by Justice Surya Kant and Justice N Kotiswar Singh asked the authorities to verify the identity documents of the petitioners who allegedly overstayed their visa. It gave the petitioners liberty to move the Jammu and Kashmir High Court, if aggrieved by the document verification order.

Asking the authorities to take a decision at the earliest, the Bench said no coercive action shall be taken against the petitioners till such time. The order shall not be treated as a precedent, it clarified.

The six members of the family—two of whom worked in Bengaluru—were facing deportation to Pakistan following the Pahalgam terror attack in which 26 innocent tourists were killed.

Petitioner Ahmed Tarek Butt and his five family members contended they were detained and taken to the Wagah Border for deportation to Pakistan despite having valid Indian documents such as Indian passports and Aadhaar numbers.

Following the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack, the Centre, in a notification dated April 25, revoked the visa of Pakistani nationals, except for those provided in the order itself and gave a specific timeline for their deportation, the Bench noted.

The petitioners’ counsel contended that they were Indian citizens having valid passports and Aadhaar numbers. While the sons worked in Bangalore, parents and daughter lived in Srinagar. The family members in Srinagar were taken in a jeep to the Wagah Border and were likely to be thrown out of India, he submitted.

"How did the father come to India from Pakistan?” the Bench asked as it wondered if the petitioners made full disclosure on the issue in their petition.

The father came to India in 1987 after surrendering his passport at the border, the counsel said, even as one of the sons—appearing virtually—claimed his father came to India from Muzaffarabad in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta said that the petitioners should first approach the authorities concerned for verification of their claims.

Following a decision taken by the Cabinet Committee on Security in the wake of the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack, the Government decided to suspend visa services to Pakistani nationals with immediate effect.

All existing valid visas issued by India to Pakistani nationals stand revoked with effect from 27 April 2025, it said, adding medical visas issued to Pakistani nationals will be valid only till 29 April 2025. All Pakistani nationals currently in India must leave India before the expiry of visas, as now amended, it said.

However, the order has been modified to allow Pakistanis to return via the Attari-Wagah Border until further orders as against its previous direction that said the border would be closed on April 30.