Berhampur: Family of 63-year-old Rahima Ara of Odisha’s Berhampur have appealed to the government to reconsider the ‘Leave India notice’ served to her.
Originally from Pakistan’s Rawalpindi, Rahima has been residing in Bada Masjid area here since she got married to Syed Riyazuddin in 1980. Her husband died three years ago. The couple have three daughters.
Rahima was at her daughter’s house in Jamshedpur when Berhampur town police issued her a notice to leave India by April 27 in the wake of the Centre’s directive to all states to identify Pakistani nationals and ensure their immediate return following the recent terrorist attack at Pahalgam in Kashmir. “She was then served the notice online through WhatsApp, and the local SP there was also intimated of the same,” Berhampur SP Saravana Vivek M told the media.
Her visa and passport are under verification.
Her other daughters in Berhampur are visibly worried over the exit notice. “Sayad has already passed and Rahima has no family member in Pakistan. Under such circumstances, if she goes there, she will be killed,” Sayad Nisar, the younger brother of Riyazudin, told TNIE.
However, she is not the only Pakistani national, who had defied the deportation notice.
Same is the story of 72-year-old Razia Sultana of Soro in Balasore district. Razia had married Sk Samsuddin of Pathan Mahala in Soro in 1981. She has since been living in the town along with her son and daughter even after her husband’s death. Though the family claims that she is Indian by birth, sources, however, indicate that her father, originally from Bihar, moved to Bangladesh and later Pakistan, where she was born in 1953. She returned to India four years later.
Also Read: Defiance & Prayers Amid Deportation Notice As Odisha Police Await Instruction On LTV
On the other hand, DGP Y B Khurania’s statement that the state is waiting for Centre’s direction on Pakistani nationals, who have applied for long-term visas (LTV), came as a relief to Pakistani Hindu woman Sharda Bai, 55, who resides in Balangir.
Originally from Sukkur city in Pakistan’s Sindh province, she had migrated to India along with her nine siblings on a 60-day visa in 1987 to escape forced conversion and marriage to a Muslim youth. After initial stay in Koraput, she moved to Balangir district following her marriage with Mahesh Kumar Kukreja, a bangles trader, at 18 in 1990.
Sharda had applied for an LTV in 2017. She sent the visa application to the Bureau of Immigration on March 25, 2017. The application showed that her visa expired on December 9, 1987.
She had earlier appealed to the Prime Minister and Chief Minister to let her stay with her husband and children.
The authorities had idenified 12 Pakistan nationals residing in Odisha. Two Pakistani Muslim women — one from Bhubaneswar and the other, a widow from Kotpad area in Koraput district — left for Delhi on April 27. They were married to Indian nationals in Odisha and had settled in the state.