Muhammad Sharif’s family back in Karachi had assured him that he would be able to return home by this Tuesday. But with a day to go for the D-Day, 27-year-old Sharif, a ‘resident’ of Kakori Police Station here since October 2004, says he has given up hope.Still awaiting completion of legal formalities for deportation to “home country” Pakistan, Sharif says, “The Indian Government has not communicated anything to Kakori police regarding my deportation.”The police here claim Sharif, who came to Lucknow from Mumbai after his deportation from Jeddah (Saudi Arabia), could not return as Pakistan has refused to consider him a citizen. Reason: the Saudi police arrested him with a forged Indian passport back in 1994. According to Sharif, his stepbrother took him to Jeddah and gave him the forged passport because he wanted the teenager to be stranded there (see box for Sharif’s tale).After his arrest here in 1994, Sharif spent a decade at the state juvenile centre and Lucknow jail before shifting base to Kakori Police Station in 2004.The Indian Express report on January 28, 2006, apparently prompted the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) to take up the issue of Sharif’s deportation.Following the panel’s intervention, Sharif said he regularly calls up family in Karachi these days. “Although I possess all documents to prove my Pakistani citizenship, I am still forced to live in Kakori Police Station,” he said. “My family has sent me electricity bills (of Karachi house), my birth certificate and other necessary documents. The HRCP also sent a letter last month to Pakistan’s High Commissioner in India, requesting them to hasten my deportation.”Kakori Station House Officer (SHO) Vinod Kumar confirmed that he is yet to receive any communication from higher authorities regarding Sharif’s deportation. “The state Home department had sought a detailed report about his stay at Kakori Police Station, and I sent it about two weeks ago,” the SHO said, adding that there has been no reply from officials yet. Sharif possesses photocopy of a letter one Brig Rao Abid Hamid, coordinator of HRCP’s Vulnerable Prisoners Project, to the Pakistan High Commission in Delhi.Confirming Sharif’s nationality, the letter states: “According to family sources, Muhammad Sharif, as a young boy, proceeded to Saudi Arabia in company of his elder brother (Ghafoor). There he was separated and despite efforts he could not be found; the family assumed him to be dead.”The letter is dated February 8, 2007. It also says Sharif’s father Haji Muhammad Ishaq Ahemad’s condition is “rapidly deteriorating”, and that he has appealed to “authorities in both India and Pakistan to make it possible for him to meet his son before he departs from this world”. Meanwhile, Qutub Jahan Kidwai, the executive director of Mumbai-based Centre for Study of Society and Communalism said she is in touch with the authorities of both countries for Sharif’s deportation.Sharif’s story: 1994-2007Then 13, Sharif says he came to Lucknow in 1994 from Mumbai after his deportation from Saudi Arabia with a forged Indian passport. The passport, Sharif says, came from his stepbrother Ghafoor, who “cooked up charges against me” and wanted to leave the teenager stranded in Jeddah. He was first arrested and subsequently sent to prison in Jeddah before authorities there put him on a Mumbai-bound flight. He later reached Lucknow, and was sent to jail here in 1994. Sharif was released in 2004 and handed over to Kakori Police Station for deportation to Pakistan. Incidentally, police records give Sharif’s Pakistan address as “son of Mohammed Ishaque, resident of Peer Saheb Gali No. 1, House No. 30, Ali Akbar Shah Road, Quarter number 100, Sector 50/C, Than No. 4, Orangi number 5-1/2, Karachi, Pakistan.”
