Parents await Indian diplomat’s reply for daughter’s repatriation

HYDERABAD:

The Hyderabad-based parents of a young Pakistani woman arrested in Bengaluru, India, have been awaiting a meeting with Indian diplomats to submit a formal request for the repatriation of their daughter. Sohail Jeevani, the father of 18 years old Iqra Jeevani, who married Mulayum Singh Yadav before the couple was arrested in Bengaluru on January 23, told The Express Tribune that he hoped to meet the diplomats at the Karachi camp office on January 30.

According to him, he had visited the office on January 27 but could not get a chance to meet the diplomats to submit his plea. “I have been urging all the people to help me get back my daughter.” said the kidnapped girl’s daughter.

Jeevani wants the people who want to support him to write emails to the foreign ministries of India and Pakistan to demand the repatriation of his daughter. He is happy that his daughter and her husband have been arrested because his whole family is worried about their daughter’s fate when she is in the hands of a family with apparently spurious identities.

Iqra went missing on September 19, 2022, when she did not return from her college, FG college Hyderabad. Jeevani registered a kidnapping first information report (FIR) at the City police station on the same day, nominating unknown suspects under section 365-B of the Pakistan Penal Code about kidnapping, abducting or inducing a woman for a forceful marriage.

Around 12 days later, the family received Iqra’s call, who shocked them by disclosing her marriage and that too with an Indian man, who allegedly introduced himself as a Muslim named Sameer Ansari. His profession also lied as Bengaluru police revealed that he is a security guard and not a manager in some IT company. Iqra travelled from Karachi to Dubai and from Dubai to Kathmandu, Nepal, before illegally entering India, where she was renamed Rava Yadav. The couple is currently in the custody of the Indian police, which has booked them for illegal entry and forging fake identity documents through which an aadhar card was issued to Iqra.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 30^th, 2023.