Caught between abuse and borders: Siblings face deportation with abusive stepmother they once ran away from

Two children who found refuge in a Srinagar Children’s Home now risk being sent back to Pakistan, a place they barely remember and have no family to rely on.

Srinagar: “We lost our mother. We lost our home. Please don’t take away our only hope.”

These heartbreaking words, spoken by a teenage girl to one of her relatives, have come to define the quiet tragedy unfolding in the crossfire of geopolitics, inside a non-governmental organization (NGO)-run Children’s Home in Srinagar amid New Delhi’s directive asking Pakistani-origin residents to leave the country.

Caught between the harsh dictates of politics and the fragility of childhood, the girl and her younger brother — both born to a Pakistani mother and a Kashmiri father — are now at risk of being sent back in the wake of the April 22 terror attack in Pahalgam’s Baisaran meadow that left 26 civilians dead and sharply escalated tensions between the two-nuclear armed neighboring countries.

“This is the only place where we have known love after years of pain and abandonment. We have no one in Pakistan. Kashmir is our only home,” whispered a tearful 18-year-old girl, clutching her younger brother’s hand tightly at a quiet Children’s Home in Srinagar — a place that has sheltered their broken hearts since 2018.

Their father, Bashir Ahmad Shah, a resident of remote Malangam in north Kashmir’s Bandipora district, once crossed over to Pakistan in 1994 in search of a cause that consumed thousands of lives. Years later, weary of conflict and longing for a normal life, he returned home in 2016 under the Jammu and Kashmir Government’s Return and Rehabilitation Policy. With him came not just the memories of a turbulent past, but a Pakistani wife and four children — two from his first wife who had died, and two from his second marriage.

Soon after their arrival, the orphan children’s life took a darker turn. Their stepmother, unfamiliar and unkind, subjected the siblings to relentless abuse, an official familiar with the case told DH. Unable to bear the daily humiliation and pain, the brother and sister fled their father’s home. In 2018, they found refuge in a Children’s Home — a sanctuary where, for the first time in years, they found safety, warmth, and a chance to rebuild their lives.

Now, the siblings - technically still Pakistani nationals - who have finally begun to heal and excel in their studies, face a cruel new threat. Following the recent terror attack in Pahalgam, the Central government has ordered almost all Pakistani-origin citizens to leave the country — a move seen as a stern response to rising security concerns. Amid this sweeping action, the two children are being asked to leave India along with their abusive stepmother — the very woman they fled from.

“Their biological mother is dead. They have no family in Pakistan to receive or care for them. Here, they are studying well, living peacefully, and seem finally settled. Handing these children over to someone they ran away from, without any blood relatives in Pakistan to receive them, is deeply inhumane,” the official, who wished anonymity, said.

For the brother and sister, Pakistan is not home. It is a distant land tied only by bloodlines, not memories, not love. Child protection activists are pleading for a humane approach, urging that the siblings be allowed to continue their lives in Kashmir, where hope has finally taken root after years of trauma.

In 2017, the J&K government revealed that 377 former militants, along with 864 family members, had returned from Pakistan under the rehabilitation policy. Of the many Kashmiri youngsters who had crossed the Line of Control (LoC) into PoK in the 1990s to get arms training after insurgency in Kashmir, some had given up violence, married there and started their lives afresh.

These women and their estimated 3,000 children, who have been residing in different parts of Kashmir, have neither been given Indian citizenship nor do they have any travel documents.

As decisions regarding their fate are debated behind closed doors, the two children wait — clutching their schoolbooks and each other — fearful that the fragile world they have just begun to build might be ripped away once more.

And, as Indo-Pak hostilities harden official positions, it is the vulnerable especially, children like them who find themselves on the frontlines of displacement yet again.