With her classmates Zarine was also due to present a fashion show at the school. She was to model saris she had herself designed.

Just before her deportation, she appealed to the Children’s Commissioner: “This country has given me my missed childhood back. I have to give back my contribution to this country for giving me such a good and enjoyable life.”

In February, Zarine lost her legal battle to stay in England when, despite overwhelming medical evidence, the immigration judge Justice Herlihy refused to grant her permission to stay in the UK. Her mother Tasnim implored the immigration officials to come to the hospital and see her condition. She said: “This is the worst time in my life. I want to say so many things but I can’t. When I told Zarine the news she just cried and said, ‘Why’”. Soon, she and Zarine voluntarily returned to India.

The immigration department took a bafflingly strident line in this case and even impeded her treatment on the state-funded NHS arguing that she was not a British national entitled to free treatment on the NHS. She waited for almost 10 days before her treatment could begin, losing vital time in her struggle to remain alive.

Many in her school are still shocked and angry. Ms Robinson, one of her favourite teachers, said: “From a personal point of view, I hope that the Home Office will look carefully at what has happened in Zarine’s case and learn from it so that other people are not placed in the same difficult circumstances. To question a child’s entitlement to medical treatment when (she is) suffering from a rare and terminal disease is inhumane.”