Disowned by Pak kin, woman stuck in jail

SOURCE: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Disowned-by-Pak-kin-woman-stuck-in-jail/articleshow/7464309.cms

AMRITSAR: A jail in Amritsar has become a forced home for Rohilla Akhtar, now a Pakistani citizen. Married to one Mohammad Afzhal, another Bangladeshi like her, they decided to migrate to Pakistan. However, the woman was arrested without valid visa documents in India while she was coming back from Bangladesh alone after the couple accepted citizenship of Pakistan. Her husband and brother in Pakistan have refused to recognize her.

She has now approached Pakistan's human rights commission through her Indian lawyer for her return to Pakistan. Initially, a Bangladeshi citizen Rohilla got married to Mohammad Afzhal in Bangladesh but the family later migrated to Pakistan. About two-and-half years ago, she had gone back to Bangladesh but on her way back to Pakistan, she came to India without a valid visa and was arrested at the border, informed advocate Ajay Virmani. She was sentenced to six months' imprisonment but couldn't be sent back in the absence of verification of her antecedents in Pakistan, he added.

Her husband and brother were not willing to take her back, may be for some personal reasons, so they were not cooperating in verifying her identity and other antecedents, the lawyer said.

'She is not a Bangladeshi national anymore so she can't expect help from that country,' he said. Rohilla's brother is a driver of a police officer in Karachi.

Quoting what Hamid, a relative of Rohilla said to him in Karachi on Wednesday, Virmani said he told him that neither her brother nor her husband were willing to take her back in the family fold for some personal reasons. The advocate informed that he has now taken up the issue with the chairperson of Pakistan Human Rights Organization Asma Jahangir who had assured to get her justice. 'She had assured to impress upon the Pakistani government to accept her being a Pakistani national,' he said.