Indian woman arrives in Pakistan to visit ancestral home after 75 years

92-year-old Reena Chibbar requests India and Pakistan to make it easier for citizens to visit each other

LAHORE:

The Pakistani High Commission as part of a goodwill gesture issued a three-month visa to a 92-year-old Indian woman, Reena Chhibar, who reached Pakistan on Saturday.

As she made her way through the Wagah-Attari border to see her ancestral home, Prem Niwas, in Rawalpindi, she urged the governments of both the countries to “work together” to ease visa restrictions to make “coming and going easy for us”.

Reena reminisced of a multi-cultural diverse community that was thriving in Pindi before the partition as she was driven from the border to Rawalpindi. “My siblings had friends who would come over to our house from various communities, including Muslims,” she said, remembering that “our house-help was also a diverse mix of people”.

In 1947, after the partition, her family moved to India. She was 15 years old at the time, and though nearly 75 years have passed since then she said she “could not remove her ancestral home, her neighborhood and the streets from her heart”.

Reena had applied for visa in 1965 to visit Pakistan, but she says she could not acquire permission amid high tensions due to the war between the two neighbors. She still managed to visit Lahore to watch a match between Pakistan and England as Pakistan had issues visas to Indians to watch the match.

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Reena claims that she had expressed the desire to visit her ancestral home on social media in 2021, upon which a Pakistani citizen named Sajjad Haider contacted her and sent her images of the house. In a video on social media, she claimed that she had applied for a visa to visit the place in 2021 which was rejected.

The 92 year-old then turned to social media and expressed her desire to visit Pakistan. She also tagged the now Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Hina Rabbani Khar in her post.

According to Reena, the minister immediately directed the Pakistani High Commission to issue her a visa and soon after, she was contacted by the high commission in New Dehli. After meeting with the commission’s Aftab Hassan Khan, she was issued a visa for 90 days.

Reena Chhibar arrived in Pakistan via Wagah border on Saturday morning, her eyes became moist as she crossed the Pak-India border, from Wagah border, Reena left for Rawalpindi where she will visit her ancestral home Prem Niwas and her childhood friends from the neighborhood.

It should be noted that Pakistan and India had signed an agreement to grant visas to citizens over 60 years of age at the border, which is not being implemented.