Pakistani brides of former Kashmiri militants reiterate deportation demand

Pakistani brides of former Kashmiri militants, who returned from across the Line of Control (LoC) under a rehabilitation scheme, Monday stated that Kashmir was not a safer place for them and demanded they be deported back.

“We want the Government of India to allow us to return home to meet our dear ones. The government has rejected us as citizens and it makes no sense for the authorities to stop us from deporting us back to our residential places,” a group of Pakistani-origin Kashmiri brides told reporters in Srinagar.

They said they have knocked on almost all the doors but don’t know why their voices go unheard.

Hundreds of Kashmiri men who went to PoK for arms training in the 1990s and early 2000s came back with wives after then Omar Abdullah-led J&K government introduced a “rehabilitation scheme” in 2010 for those who had crossed over to the other side of the LoC between 1989 and 2009.

However, a decade later, the policy has left behind a trail of broken families, domestic abuse, unemployment and for many wives of former militants, a yearning for their home.

Last month, a Pakistani wife of a Kashmiri militant from north Kashmir’s Kupwara district contested the district development council (DDC) election. However, authorities stopped counting votes after a complaint about her citizenship issue was received.

Bushra, another Pakistani-origin bride, who had also contested the polls, asked why her nomination form was accepted in the first instance. “We want justice and want the government here to deport us back to Pakistan as we are not being considered as the citizens here,” she said.

The other women present during the presser also expressed their sufferings and demanded the government of India and Pakistan to take immediate steps for deporting them.

In 2017, the J&K government revealed that 377 former militants, along with 864 family members, had returned from Pakistan since 2010.