02-05-2025
To Attari and back, J&K constable: I would rather die than go to Pakistan
On April 26, when a senior officer called him to say that he and his eight siblings had to leave India because they were considered Pakistan citizens, Iftkhar Ali felt as if someone had cut the ground from beneath his feet. Having served 27 years in the J&K Police service and knowing no other home, he told his shocked superior officer he would 'kill himself' rather than cross the border.
'Like you, I too had only heard of Pakistan,' Iftkhar, a 45-year-old constable from Salwah village in Jammu and Kashmir's Poonch district, tells The Indian Express now. 'I have everything — my wife and children, relatives, friends, and colleagues — here. There's nothing in Pakistan.'
On April 29 — three days after he and his eight siblings were issued a 'Leave India' notice in the aftermath of the Pahalgam terror attack — the Jammu and Kashmir High Court stayed it, ordering the central government and the J&K administration against forcing them to leave India. The order came on the back of a petition that he filed in the High Court against the notice.
As a result, Ali and his eight siblings — older brothers Zulfqar Ali, 49, Mohammad Shafiq, 60, and Mohammad Shakoor, 52; and his sisters Shazia Tabsam, 42, Kouser Parveen, 47, Naseem Akhter, 50, Akseer Akhtar, 54, and Nashroon Akhter, 56 — have now returned to the village.
Although he got a notice, neither his wife nor his three minor sons got one 'because they were all born in India, they didn't get the notice', he says.
The eighth of nine children, Ali was two years old when his parents, Faqur Din and Fatima Bi, brought him to the erstwhile state of J&K.
In their petition, Iftikhar 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, adding that their father was considered a permanent resident of J&K 'even at the time of enactment of the J&K Constitution in 1957'.
A permanent resident certificate was a document previously issued under the Jammu and Kashmir Permanent Resident Certificate (Procedure) Act, 1963, to prove one's permanent residence in the former state of Jammu and Kashmir. A 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 cast shadows 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 Salwah in 1983.
Posted in Katra since earlier this year, Iftkhar joined the state police in the late 90s — when militancy was at its peak. His first posting was in 1998 at Deval Police Post in Reasi district's Gulabgarh area, he says.
It was his senior officer from Mendhar police station in Poonch who called him about the 'Leave India' notice that the Poonch Deputy Commissioner had issued. 'On hearing myself being dubbed as a Pakistani national, I was shocked,' he says. 'I told them I would rather die than put my signature on it, but I was advised to do so, and eventually, I approached the HC.'
Earlier this week, even while his siblings were taken to the Attari border, he approached the High Court with his brother Zulfikar. Then, the two brothers, by then taken into police custody and kept at Belicharana, waited for the court ruling.
In his order Tuesday, Justice Rahul Bharti said 'prima facie a case is made out' from the revenue papers that their counsel had submitted that they were not Pakistani citizens. The court also 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.
This came after the siblings claimed that the Faqur Din and his family did not enter India stealthily, but had, soon after came back, filed a petition in the High Court seeking that they be considered Indian citizens.
'The petition was, however, rejected by court with the observation that the right to citizenship can be decided only by an appropriate authority — the central government,' the siblings' petition in the court said.
According to the family, they finally became state subjects — Iftkhar in 1997 and his siblings in 2000.
Safeer Choudhary, an activist who protested against the deportation, says Iftkar's parents are buried at Salwah and all his family members are 'well-known for their pro-India stance'.
'During the last over three decades of militancy in Jammu and Kashmir, none of them have ever been called by police or Army for questioning even on suspicion,' he claims.
For Iftkhar, it is the support he got from the J&K Police force during this 'trying time' that he most appreciates. Ever since his return, there's been a steady stream of visitors at home, all offering their good wishes, the policeman says.
'I will always remain grateful to them for that,' he says.
