M A I N   N E W S

Waiting for deportation to Pak since ’96
S.P. Sharma
Tribune News Service

Jammu, August 13
She was imprisoned for one year in 1995 on the charge of entering Indian territory without valid documents in the Poonch district from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK). She has been waiting for deportation for the past about eight years as the Pakistani authorities are reluctant to accept her along with her India-born daughter on the grounds of legal technicalities.

This is the story of Shehnaz Parveen and her eight-year-old daughter, Mobin Kesar, born in a prison in the Poonch district following her alleged rape by a jail officer who was facing trial for the offence.

Virtually a broken woman, Shehnaz told this correspondent today that she would present herself in the high court in case the authorities did not expedite her repatriation to Pakistan.

She belongs to Abuwala village in Punjab district in Pakistan. She strayed into Indian territory from Malni village in Bhimber district of PoK in 1995, when she wanted to commit suicide because of problems at home. Army personnel spotted her on the river bank and took her into custody and she was interrogated for three days. She was later handed over to the police and her case was presented in a court at Naushera in Poonch. She was sentenced to 12 months’ imprisonment and a fine of Rs 500 by the court.

A jail official allegedly raped her at Poonch. Mr Veerana Aivalli, the then DGP (Prisons), visited her in jail and got an FIR registered against the official. Mr A.K. Sawhney, who had been pleading her case, said the trial of the official was at an advanced stage.

She was shifted to the district jail at Jammu, where the girl was born. The Pakistani authorities were insisting that they were willing to take her back without the girl.

After the completion of her deportation papers, she was taken to the Wagah border for being deported on June 21, 2001, but the Pakistani authorities put their foot down and did not allow her to cross over. The Pakistani authorities said they would not allow the India-born child to accompany her on their soil.

A visibly upset Shehnaz today said she was dying to return to her family in Pakistan, but would not leave the child behind. She said her brother, Mushtaq Ahmed, had taken up her case with the human rights commission in Pakistan.

She said she was surviving here on a monthly interest of Rs 1750 on a fixed deposit of Rs 3 lakh in the name of her daughter, Mobin, by the state government on the orders of the court as compensation for the illegal detention of the girl. She said she was better in jail as she was facing many problems outside.

Mr Sawhney said although the woman was to be released from jail after completing her jail term in 1996, the authorities continued to keep her in jail till 2001 without any court order. To regularise her detention, she was retrospectively shown in records as arrested under the Public Safety Act. The high court quashed her detention and as an exceptional case, ordered a compensation for her daughter who had to spend about six years in jail with her mother for no fault of hers.

Mobin has learnt to read and write Hindi at a local school. She is studying in Class II.