Leaving their homeland to live better, scores of women accompanied their husbands to Kashmir under a government-backed rehabilitation policy. After years of fighting for citizenship rights, a situation emerged where they were separated again, reports Humaira Nabi
A knock at the door scares Mehar, a 40-year-old resident of north Kashmir’s Baramulla. A mother of three, she lives in constant fear. Her concern is separation from the family she raised and respected from last more than a decade.
Originally from Karachi, Mehar married a Baramulla man and moved to Kashmir in 2014 under a rehabilitation policy announced by the government in 2010. Post deadly attack in Pahalgam on April 22, 2025, as the government decided to deport Pakistani nationals, her fate hangs in the balance.
“I tuck my children into bed each night, not knowing if I will be there when they wake up,” she said.
Mehar is one of nearly 400 women who arrived in Kashmir after 2010 when the government introduced a rehabilitation policy aimed at erstwhile outlaws who had crossed the border. The policy allowed those who renounced militancy to return home with their Pakistani wives and children.
Official figures indicate that of the 4,587 Kashmiri men who had relocated to Pakistan between 1989 and 2009, only 489 returned under this initiative, often via Nepal. Many, like Mehar’s husband, brought families—wives and children who now number around 3,000 in the Valley
But the Pahalgam attack—a brutal assault in the Baisaran meadow that shook the region and put all such families in sudden fear and confusion.
Farewells
The deportations depicted anguish after years of peace. A widely circulated video of 60-year-old teacher Sageer Fatima in Rajouri evoked emotions when she said goodbye to her school and the people around her. Sageer, who had lived in India for 43 years after arriving in 1982 with her mother and sister Zameer, married in Shahdra Sharif village of Thanamandi.
Now, alongside Zameer, 65, who is paralysed and battling heart disease, she faced repatriation to Pakistan, where they say that they have no ties left.
Their story is not isolated. Abdul Waheed Bhat, an elderly man who had lived in India since 1980, died of a heart attack on April 30, 2025, inside a bus near the Attari-Wagah border during deportation. Around 80 and paralysed, Bhat had no family by his side as officials prepared his documents. He slipped away before crossing that final frontier, his body later shifted to the Civil Hospital in Amritsar.
Legal Limbo
The deportations have been marked by chaos and inconsistency. Iftikhar Ali, a Jammu and Kashmir Police constable, watched as his eight siblings—five sisters and three brothers—were sent to the Attari border from Poonch district. Born in Pakistan after his parents shifted there in 1965, Ali returned with his family to Salwah village in Mendhar in 1983. Now 45, he has served in the police for 27 years, currently posted at Katra. His family owns 17 acres of land and a house, yet faced deportation following a notice from the Poonch Deputy Commissioner on April 26, 2025.
Ali challenged the order in the Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh High Court, arguing that he and his siblings were Indian citizens by birth. The court intervened and issued an interim stay in his favour.
Minal Khan, a Pakistani woman married to CRPF man Munir Khan, faced deportation a month after she arrived in India. The couple, who met online and solemnised a nikah virtually in May 2024, saw Minal arrive in India on a short-term visa in March 2025, which expired on March 22. Her application for a long-term visa was pending when the deportation order came. She boarded a bus for Attari, but her lawyer, Ankur Sharma, secured a last-minute court stay, allowing her to return to Jammu on May 1, 2025
Humanitarian Outcry
The deportations have sparked outrage. Former Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti urged a “compassionate approach,” warning of “deep emotional and physical distress” for families who “know no other home.”
Senior CPIM leader and lawmaker from Kulgam, Mohammad Yousuf Tarigami, called them “inhumane,” noting that these women “have built lives here, raising families and living peacefully.” MLA Sheikh Khursheed argued that such acts “alienate the innocent and strengthen the enemy’s narrative.”
The scale is staggering: over 30 Pakistani nationals have been repatriated from Jammu and Kashmir, including 59 from the Valley—36 from Srinagar, nine each from Baramulla and Kupwara, four from Budgam, and two from Shopian. In Jammu, 11 were sent from Poonch, eight from Rajouri, and four from Jammu district, though some, like Sara Khan from Budhal, returned when Pakistan refused them, her newborn just a fortnight old.
Life on the Edge
Shameema Akhtar, mother of Shaurya Chakra awardee Mudasir Sheikh, narrowly escaped deportation after a notice was issued in error. Her son, an SPO, was killed during a counterinsurgency operation in 2022, yet her origins briefly put her at risk. “We deserve to live in India,” her son Basit told The Print. “My brother sacrificed himself for this country.”
Dilshada Begum, a widow from Muzaffarabad, faces a similar nightmare. Settling in Kashmir in 2012, she raised five children after her husband’s death, one now married with a child. “Sending me back would be like tearing me away from my soul,” she tells ETV Bharat.
