Marriage to Pakistani lands her in jail in homeland

India jevi vaat nathi (nothing can be like India),’’ said 38-year-old Madina Shabbir soon after her release from Vadodara Central ...

India jevi vaat nathi (nothing can be like India),’’ said 38-year-old Madina Shabbir soon after her release from Vadodara Central Jail on Thursday.

Baby Noor may symbolise the recent thaw in Indo-Pak relations, but this India-born Petlad resident is trying hard to rub off her ‘‘Pakistani’’ tag, courtesy a first marriage to a Pakistani national.

Called Yasin Malik, headed for Pak, youth ends in jail

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Srinagar; A Kashmiri youth who was arrested by Punjab Police on his way to Pakistan to meet his uncle, apparently for being a namesake of JKLF chairman Mohammad Yaseen Malik, has sought Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee’s intervention to end his five-year agony.
Malik, a resident of Zandfaran village of Barmaulla district who is currently out on bail, was arrested by Punjab Police allegedly on fabricated charges in 1999 and his case is still pending before the court of the Chief Judicial Magistrate, Amritsar.
In his letter to the PM, Malik alleged he was arrested despite having valid travel documents as he refused to ‘‘grease the palm of the policemen at Attari border’’ while on way to Bahawalpore in Pakistan to meet his uncle. After waiting for justice for over five years, he said he was amused to see a message from the Punjab Police ‘‘advising me to visit the state as the Punjab Human Rights Commission is holding a fresh inquiry into the case’’. PTI

Trying to regain her citizenship has turned out to be an arduous task for Madina Shabbir who, despite returning to India in 1988 and having married an Indian, is facing legal battles to avoid being deported to Pakistan.

Madina, who hails from Bamanva village in Khambhat Taluka, married Karachi resident Qayyum Musaji in 1980. The marriage lasted for seven years with her husband taking away her passport and leaving her in India. Though she followed him to Pakistan later, it was only to return home, divorced and pregnant in 1988.

Now married again to a Petlad resident, her woes are far from over. Her in-laws, too, are not happy with her Pakistan link.

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‘‘We had warned our brother that he would be in trouble as he was marrying a woman whose ex-husband was a Pakistani,’’ says Iqbal Ismail, Madina’s brother-in-law who hates the spotlight that’s fallen on the family since Madina was sentenced to six months in jail.

‘‘I kept filing applications for visa extension and to get back my Indian citizenship,’’ says Madina.

Her absence during a routine police check in 1995 had landed her in a court case, as she was still a Pakistani citizen. And on July 23 this year, the Petlad Civil Court sentenced her to six months imprisonment and a fine of Rs 1,000 for illegally over-staying in India.

‘‘I wish the authorities would understand that there is nothing left for her in Pakistan. She is already married to an Indian, our daughter, too, is now in Class IX,’’ says Shabbir Ismail, who has adopted the daughter from the first marriage. Their only hope now, after her release on bail on Thursday, is an appeal at the Nadiad sessions court.

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Her advocate M.M. Khan believes there may be hope for her on humanitarian grounds. ‘‘We are trying to expedite her application for Indian citizenship,’’ says Khan.

Her second husband, an operator in a Petlad cinema hall, cannot understand what the fuss is all about.

‘‘All I want is that she should be allowed to stay here with me. What will she do in a foreign land? Was it her fault that she got married to a Pakistani who later divorced her?’’ asked Shabbir, while waiting outside Vadodara Central Jail for a glimpse of his wife.