Taken to border for deportation, then given relief by court, J-K policeman and 8 siblings return to Poonch

Indian Express

02-05-2025

A Jammu and Kashmir Police constable whose deportation to Pakistan was stayed by the Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh High Court returned with his eight siblings to Poonch Tuesday.
Former Salwah Sarpanch Showkat Ahmed told The Indian Express that Iftkhar Ali, 45, and his siblings – all residents of Salwah in Poonch — were brought back from Attari in Punjab and kept at the Jammu district police lines Wednesday night, leaving for Poonch Thursday afternoon.
Ali has been serving in the J&K Police for 27 years, and is currently posted at Katra.
The development comes a day after the Jammu and Kashmir High Court had stayed the deportation notice sent to the family by the Poonch Deputy Commissioner on April 26 on the back of the central government's orders to suspend visa services and sent back all 'Pakistan residents' except those who held long-term, official or diplomatic visas.
By the time the HC stayed the notice, however, authorities had already taken all nine to the Attari border in Punjab.
In their petition, Iftikhar Ali and his siblings said that their father Faqur Din was a 'hereditary state subject' and Indian citizen according to the 1955 Citizenship Act. They also said he owned about 17 acres of land and a house at Salwah village.
Issued under the Jammu and Kashmir Permanent Resident Certificate (Procedure) Act, 1963, a permanent resident certificate was a document previously issued to prove one's permanent residence in the former state of Jammu and Kashmir. The feature under the special status offered to the state, the certification ceased to exist after the Article 370 in 2019.
According to the petition, what put a cloud over their citizenship is that during the 1965 war, Pakistan took over areas along the Line of Control, including the place where Faqur Din and his wife Fatima Bi lived with children, then three. As a result, the family spent years at a camp in Tralkhal in Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir, during which time the couple had six more children.
Locals in the area claim Faqur Din and his family returned to Kashmir between the late 1980s and early 1990s.
In his order, Justice Rahul Bharti issued a notice to the Union of India and the administration of Jammu and Kasmir and also ordered that the nine petitioners should be forced to leave the UT. The order said that 'prima facie a case is made out' by the revenue papers that their counsel had submitted that they are not Pakistani citizens and asked the deputy commissioner of Poonch to file an affidavit recording details of any property that the petitioners held, either in their own name or in reference to their late father Faqur Din.
The case was listed for next hearing on May 20.