30 yrs of marriage,few days to deportation to Pakistan

The first time they were apart was a Monday,June 2,2002,Gulfam still remembers clearly. That was the first time Nuzhat was arrested on charges of overstaying without a visa or valid passport and spent a night in jail.

All of Friday,Gulfam tried in vain to get a chance to visit Nuzhat in Tihar jail. “She may have to go to Pakistan and,in her last week here,we can’t be together because she has to be in jail. The day passed in first trying to get to Tihar,and then in procedural formalities,” he says. Gulfam will now try to see her on Monday.

Gulfam and Nuzhat are first cousins. At the time of Partition,while Gulfam’s family stayed back in India,Nuzhat’s went to Pakistan. In the early 1980s,Gulfam went to see his uncle’s family in Pakistan,which was the first time the two met. They fell in love,says Gulfam’s brother Mohammad Yusuf. “He had gone for work,but love blossomed. He came back,engaged to our cousin,and a very happy man. In the family,they are our very own Veer and Zara,” Yusuf smiles.

On August 2,1983,Gulfam returned to Pakistan with his family,got married,and came home with his bride to the family’s ancestral house in Turkman Gate,where the couple have lived ever since.

Nuzhat continued to stay on visas,extended up to a few months,till she got her first long-term visa in 1985. After that too,she kept applying for and getting extensions.

“In 1988,her passport expired,so we applied for a new passport at the Pakistan High Commission. This lasted till 1993. Then when we applied for a new passport,the Pakistan High Commission refused,saying it had been been two five-year terms since our marriage and now she should seek Indian citizenship,” Gulfam says.

In 1994,her visa expired,and the family applied for citizenship with the Ministry of Home Affairs in 1996. Gulfam believes that their file has been lost. “They never say that in writing,even though we have made repeated requests. I have even submitted a fine of around Rs 1,800,as is the norm for the period she overstayed her visa. I have produced these records. So why is her stay here still illegal?” he asks.

Passport officials,however,have claimed in court that various reminders were sent to Nuzhat after 1993,when her visa expired,but she never responded. The court also convicted Nuzhat noting that she “did not take any step to get her visa extended and passport re-validated despite several opportunities”.

Their 22-year-old daughter Gulzhaat believes it was the Kargil war of 1999 that “ruined” their lives. “The Delhi Police arrested my mother in 2002 as a fallout of the war.”

They wonder if it had been better if Gulfam and Nuzhat had stayed on in Pakistan,Gulzhat adds. “This country has not been fair to us. Pakistani Hindus who come here illegally get visa extensions,but my mother is still branded a foreigner,” she says,brushing away tears. “When Sarabjit was attacked,when a Pakistani prisoner was bashed up in a Jammu jail,every time the two countries fight and politicians say we should break ties with Pakistan,my father worries it will somehow affect my mother’s case.”

In 1995,Gulfam’s sister married another cousin of the family in Pakistan. “My sister returned home with a Pakistani citizen,with a passport from the country,a year after her marriage. But after 30 years,my wife is still not an Indian citizen,” Gulfam points out.

Nuzhat has brothers in Pakistan,but she hasn’t seen them since 1992. Holding on to papers and records of their case,Gulfam adds helplessly: “Where will she go? How will I stay without her,and what will she do there all alone?”