For eight months now, Kapoor Jan has been living in Srinagar’s Government Psychiatric Hospital with schizophrenic patients for company. She is fit to go home, doctors say. But home is on the other side of the LoC and the police team that admitted her never returned to take her back.

In July 2005, Jan strayed into this side of the LoC in Uri while grazing her goats. Since then, she has been convicted, served her time and hoped in vain for the government to send her back. In February this year, she broke down from the stress of her long-drawn wait and suffered a “brief psychotic episode.” She recovered after a brief stay at the Srinagar hospital.

“I didn’t know I had crossed the border. I had gone to fetch goats and they (soldiers) caught me,” says Jan. “My family doesn’t know. They must think I am dead,” she says.

Baramullah deputy commissioner Latief-u-Zaman Deva said her case has been recommended for deportation.”We are also waiting,” he said.

Sources in the police say her deportation has been ordered but the CID has not been intimated about the LoC point from where she would be sent back.

After she crossed the LoC in 2005, she was handed over to the Uri police, who booked her under the Egress and Internal Movement Control Ordinance. She was sentenced to six months simple detention and released on January 26, 2006. She has been awaiting deportation ever since.

... contd.