J&K High Court orders government to bring back woman deported to Pakistan

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5 days ago

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'.
Judge Rahul Bharti said in the order that human rights were the 'most sacrosanct component of a human life' and, therefore, 'there are occasions when a constitutional court is supposed to come up with SOS-like indulgence notwithstanding the merits and demerits of a case…'
The merits of the case can be adjudicated separately, the judge said.
Given the 'exceptional nature of facts and circumstances' of the case, the court ordered the Union home secretary to comply with the order within 10 days.
The petitioner's counsel Ankur Sharma told The Hindu that the authorities had not acted on the order so far and Rashid had not yet returned to India.
The bench will hear the matter next on July 1, when the government is to file a compliance report.
The terror attack at Baisaran near the town of Pahalgam on April 22 left 26 persons dead and 16 injured. The terrorists targeted tourists after asking their names to ascertain their religion, the police said. All but three of those killed were Hindu.
Among several diplomatic measures, New Delhi had on April 24 announced that the visas of Pakistani citizens in India would stand revoked from April 27 and that they had to leave the country before the deadline.
Following the deadline, the police in many states had deported several Pakistani citizens who remained in the country.