J&K High Court orders government to bring back woman deported to Pakistan
The Jammu and Kashmir High Court has ordered the Union government to bring back a 63-year-old woman to India on humanitarian grounds after she was deported to Pakistan during a crackdown on Pakistani citizens following the Pahalgam terror attack.
The order was passed on June 6.
Rakshanda Rashid, the petitioner, had lived in Jammu on a long-term visa for 38 years with her husband, a retired government official, and two children, The Hindu reported.
She was detained by the Jammu and Kashmir Police and taken to the Attari-Wagah border checkpoint, from where she was deported to Pakistan on April 30.
Since being deported, Rashid has been living at a hotel in Lahore, her daughter Falak Sheikh told The Hindu. Rashid has no relatives in Pakistan and may soon run out of the cash she had taken from India, her daughter said.
Sheikh told the newspaper that her mother had applied for Indian citizenship in 1996 but the application had not been processed.
The petitioner’s husband Sheikh Zahoor Ahmed said that Rashid had no one in Pakistan who could take care of his wife, who was suffering from several ailments.
According to the court order, Ahmed said that Rashid’s “health and life is at risk with each passing day and [she had been] left to fend for herself as abandoned”.
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