Pakistani wives of former Kashmiri militants to be deported despite pleas to stay

Some Pakistani women said they would rather die than be sent back to their home country following India's latest visa restrictions

Authorities in Jammu and Kashmir on Tuesday have set the ball rolling for the deportation of 60 Pakistanis, one of them the mother of a policeman killed in a terror attack, officials said.

A Pakistani citizen (C) bids goodbye to her son, an Indian citizen, as she prepares to return to her country through the India-Pakistan Wagah border post, about 35 km from Amritsar on April 29, 2025.(AFP)

They were all collected from various districts and taken in buses to Punjab, where they will be handed over to the Pakistani authorities at the Wagah border, they said.

Most of the deportees are wives and children of ex-militants, who returned to the valley under the 2010 rehabilitation policy for former ultras.

Of them, 36 had been living in Srinagar, nine each in Baramulla and Kupwara, four in Budgam, and two in Shopian district, officials said.

Shameema Akhtar, the mother of Special Police Officer Mudasir Ahmad Shaikh, who died in May 2022 while fighting terrorists, is one of the deportees.

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Mudasir was part of the team of undercover operatives of the Jammu and Kashmir Police, which intercepted a group of foreign terrorists.

"My sister-in-law is from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir which is our territory. Only Pakistanis should have been deported," an apparently not happy Mohammad Younus, Mudasir's uncle, told reporters.

After Mudasir's death, Union Home Minister Amit Shah visited the family, so did the Lieutenant Governor, twice, he said.

"My bhabhi was 20 years old when she came here and has been living here for 45 years now. My appeal to (PM Narendra) Modi and Amit Shah is that they should not do it," Younus said.