‘No longer a Muslim’: Seema Haider's family in Pakistan doesn't want her back
Seema Ghulam Haider's neighbours and a relative made it clear that they don't want her back in Pakistan, PTI reported.
Seema Ghulam Haider, a Pakistani mother of four, sneaked into India to live with a Hindu man whom she befriended through an online game platform PUBG in 2019. After five days behind bars, Seema and Greater Noida local Sachin Meena, earlier this month, stepped out of the Luksar Jail in Gautam Budh Nagar.
While Seema was arrested on July 4 for illegally entering India without a visa via Nepal with her four children, all aged below seven years, Sachin was put behind bars for sheltering the illegal immigrants.
But now, Seema's neighbours and a relative made it clear that they don't want her back in Pakistan, news agency PTI reported.
"She should just send her children back to Pakistan. She can stay there. Now she is no longer even a Muslim,” said the 16-year-old son of the landlord in whose rented home Seema stayed with her children for the last three years before deciding to illegally enter India to be with her Hindu lover.
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Earlier, Seema told HT's Ashni Dhaor that she had been her husband since March this year when the two married at the Pashupatinath Temple in Kathmandu.
“I can’t live without Sachin, and because he is my husband, I’ve accepted his religion and culture as my own and changed the names of my four children, who call Sachin ‘Baba’. Sachin’s parents have also accepted me, and I have adopted all their cultural practices and will continue to live with them,” said 27-year-old Seema.
What we know about Seema Haider
Seema's home is in a neighbourhood of Bhittaiabad a Katchi Abadi in the heart of Gulistan-e-Jauhar and it is a three-room portion in a building devoid of any paint and located in a narrow lane full of garbage and overflowing sewerage, PTI reported.
Her husband Ghulam Haider works in Saudi Arabia.
"She was a tenant with us for three years with her children. She lived alone with her children. Her father-in-law lives some distance away from here,” Nur Muhammad, the landlord’s son, told the news agency.
Seema and Ghulam Haider had eloped 10 years back to Karachi and got married against the wishes of their parents.
Mian Mithoo, a high-profile religious leader in rural Sindh, known for using his seminary to convert Hindu girls to Islam and even bandits, has openly threatened to punish Seema if she returns.
His supporters have also threatened to attack Hindu worship places in Seema’s village but SSP Kashmore-Kandhkot, Irfan Samoo, assured Hindus and Sikhs they would be protected.
Samoo is not convinced that a woman with a rural background would have the courage to plan her way to India via Dubai and Kathmandu.
An officer at the police station in Karachi where Seema’s father-in-law filed an FIR is also not convinced that it is a simple case as it looks.
“The husband also keeps changing his stories to the police. First, he said he bought the house now he says he paid one million rupees to Seema’s family to settle a tribal decision when they first fled to Karachi,” he said.
Seema-Sachin love story
Talking about how they fell in love, Seema said they began talking to each other in July 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“I used to talk to many strangers online while playing PubG because I kept the mic on. That’s how I met Sachin, and we started chatting on the chatbox. We used to play for hours on end, even four hours and never stopped talking. After about four months, we exchanged phone numbers and began communicating via voice and video. We confessed our love for each other by January 2021,” Seema told HT.
According to the couple, they were inspired by the film Gadar, whose plot revolves around a cross-border love story between an Indian man and a Pakistani woman.
(With inputs from PTI)
