Far from the flashbulbs in Islamabad last week, after India and Pakistan had pulled off a major diplomatic breakthrough with the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus, a small ray of hope crept into a cell in Lahore’s Kot Lakhpat jail. There, thanks to a local court judgment yesterday, a Mumbai woman was finally on the verge of release and repatriation—five years after she had served a one-year sentence for overstaying. For Fatimabi Ahmed Abdul Rahman Salem, it was another twist in a tragedy that has already spanned the Mumbai riots, Indo-Pak relations, death of a husband and a doomed second marriage. And it’s far from over yet. Fatimabi, whose name figured in the list of 182 Indian prisoners compiled by Pakistan’s Interior Ministry recently, doesn’t know whether she has a family left to return home to. And officials fear the woman—in her 50s—may have lost her mental balance after all the trauma. The consolation, if you could call it that, is Fatimabi may be back home in a couple of weeks—the Indian High Commission has got consular access to her and even issued an emergency certificate to facilitate her return. Fatimabi’s tragedy begins with the 1992 Mumbai riots when her husband Abdul Rasheed was killed. Soon, she is said to have started work as a domestic help, to take care of her three children Hanifa, Sharifa and Zahida—she believes they are now with relatives in Mumbai. According to a petition filed on her behalf by Pakistani lawyer and activist Asma Jahangir, Fatimabi then left for Dubai, hoping for a better life. There, she married a Pakistani cloth trader Ramzan Khan, who insisted that she visit his parents. So, with a 90-day visa stamped on her Indian passport, Fatimabi reached Pakistan in 1999. But Fatimabi was in for a rude shock when she found that Ramzan had been married earlier and even had grown-up children. Besides, she was not treated well by her in-laws. One day, her brother-in-law is said to have taken her to the PIA office in Islamabad—apparently, to help her leave the country. Instead, he disappeared with all her belongings and cash, leaving Fatimabi stranded. A police patrol spotted her and discovered that her visa had already expired—she was arrested on July 21, 1999, underwent trial and was subsequently sentenced to one year’s imprisonment under the Foreigner’s Act. Then, somewhere down the line, Fatimabi’s fate got linked with the state of Indo-Pak ties, which were beginning to look up. Last December, the two countries reached an agreement on civilian prisoners, and the Indian High Commission was granted consular access to over 70 of them in Lahore, including Fatimabi. But in her case, there were problems in establishing her identity. However, Jahangir finally managed to get her impounded passport, issued in 1985 from Mumbai. However, nobody knows whether the details on Fatimabi’s 20-year-old passport still holds. And for the time being, she may be put up with an NGO. Till she gets her family back.
