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Paying the price of visiting thy neighbour

Pakistani visitors have been held incommunicado in India for long periods of time for allegedly tampering with their visas. On two occassions those stranded in India has lost their loved ones who had been desperately seeking their release. Mohammad Hussain was one such detainee who lost his daughter, Saba, who committed suicide in protest against the non-release of her parents
By Aroosa Masroor
For Muhammad Hussain, the trip to India in March last year was his last. After the mental agony he and his wife went through in the India's Jodhpur prison for a crime they never committed, they do not wish to cross the border ever again.
Hussain is the father of (late) Saba Hussain, who committed suicide in November 2008 to protest against the injustice meted out to her parents and 58 other Pakistanis who had been detained by the Indian authorities after being charged with visa tampering. He is particularly bitter about his travel plans after losing one of his eight daughters saying 'he has learnt his lesson after he paid the price of travelling to India'.
"Life moves on, but in my heart I know if someone is responsible for the death of my daughter it is the Indian authorities," says Hussain, a resident of PIB Colony. Seven months have passed since Saba died, but the family is still finding it difficult to come to terms with her death and are reluctant to share the details of the incident with the media.
The couple had learnt about their daughter's death when they returned to Pakistan, which was a month after she had committed suicide. "Had the media projected the plight of the Pakistanis detained in India for months on an end just like they covered the suicide of my daughter, she may have been with us here today," believes Husain.  
To date, he says, he has been unable to understand why such a case was registered against innocent civilians who had travelled to India only to meet their relatives. This trip in March was one of Mr and Mrs Hussain's frequent visits to their village in Jodhpur, Rajasthan where their relatives reside.
Since Hussain's relatives insisted that they extend their stay in the country by a month, he had obliged. "Obtaining a visa from Islamabad is a real hassle so we did not think twice before taking this decision," he says. However, he remained oblivious to the fact that the High Commission of India had no information of their extended stay in the country. 
His is not an isolated case. Most often, visitors are apprehended by authorities on both sides of the border for violating visa rules that are particularly stringent for Indians and Pakistanis. Initially, informs Hussain, the embassy issues a visa valid for 30 days that can later be extended in India. For an ordinary visitor, it is also required that he report to the police within 24 hours of arrival and departure.
Hussain claims that since this was not the first time he was visiting the country, he was aware of all the rules and had not violated any, but believes the Indian authorities harassed them merely because they were Pakistanis. "After we were charged for overstaying in the country, we were taken into police custody and an FIR was lodged the next day," he recalls.
Among those held were a group of Ismailis as well, he said and it was due to the joint efforts of relatives of all those detained in the Jodhpur prison, particularly the Ismaili community in India, that they were released sooner than others held in the Amritsar Jail on the same charges. Some of them are reportedly still in Indian custody and belong to Lyari in Karachi.
Today, as Hussain looks back and reads about tensions escalating between the two nuclear neighbours particularly in the wake of Mumbai attacks in November last year, he is further reluctant to travel to India. "It is impossible to let go of family ties and we continue to communicate with our relatives over the internet and telephone, but travelling to India is no longer an option. At this point I also don't have the courage to invite them over to Pakistan because we all know how both our governments humiliate an ordinary visitor and it is difficult to plead your case before them."