Monitoring Desk
ISLAMABAD: In January, an Indian man was arrested for assisting a Pakistani woman for illegally entering the country and obtaining a fake ID card. Both married later but the couple were separated after they were found to have forged with documents.
The person assisted was his wife. Mulayam Singh Yadav, 21, of India, and Iqra Jeewani, 19, of Pakistan met online three years ago while playing the board game Ludo and fell in love. They knew it would be difficult for them to be together.
India and Pakistan have a tense relationship, and the neighbours have fought three wars since 1947, when India was partitioned and Pakistan was established. This can make it difficult for people to obtain visas to visit each other.
So, Mulayam and Iqra traveled to Nepal last September and married. They then moved to the Indian city of Bangalore (Bengaluru), the capital of the state of Karnataka, and lived together. Their happy life, however, took a tragic turn in January. Jeewani was detained for illegally entering India, while Yadav was arrested and charged with fraud, forgery, and providing shelter to an undocumented foreign national.
Yadav remains in jail in Bangalore, while she was deported to Pakistan last week. The arrests have devastated Yadav’s family members in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. They say the couple’s story is just about love. His brother Jeetlal stated, “we want them to return home because we understand the situation between India and Pakistan. But they did was fall in love.”
Indian cops’ views about couple
Even the cops appear to agree. According to a senior Bangalore police official who spoke anonymously, it appears to be a love story in addition to the illegal entry and forgery. During the Covid lockdown in 2020, that love story of the couple began.
Yadav worked as a security guard for an IT firm in Bangalore, while Jeewani was a student in the Pakistani city of Hyderabad. After meeting online, the two began a long-distance relationship. However, Jeewani’s family was putting increasing pressure on her to marry.
She left Pakistan on Yadav’s advice and traveled to Nepal via Dubai to meet him. According to police, the two married in a Hindu ceremony in a temple there before traveling to India. However, because Jeewani lacked the necessary documents to remain in India, Yadav allegedly arranged for her to obtain a forged Aadhaar card, an Indian identity document.
According to the police, Yadav would leave for work every day, while Jeewani stayed at home. However, she made frequent WhatsApp calls to her mother in Pakistan, which led the police to her. Bangalore police authorities claim they were on high alert last month because the city was hosting two major international events in February: the Aero India air show and the G20 finance ministers’ meeting.
Following a thorough investigation, Jeewani was arrested for illegal entry and turned over to the Foreigners Regional Registration Office on January 20. In February, she was deported to Pakistan.
