Peshawar/Jaipur:
A married Indian woman traveled to Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province to meet her friend whom she befriended and fell in love with on Facebook, police said on Sunday.
Anju, 34, was born in Kailore village of Uttar Pradesh and lived in Alwar district of Rajasthan. He is now visiting his 29-year-old Pakistani friend Nasrullah in Upper Dir district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan.
Nasrullah, who works in the medical field, and Anju became friends on social media platform Facebook a few months ago, ARY News reported.
Anju is visiting Pakistan for a month and has not come here to get married, the Indian woman was initially in police custody but was released after the district police verified her travel documents.
A source told PTI, “He was allowed to leave after all the travel documents were in order. Security was provided to ensure that no untoward incident would bring the country into disrepute.”
Anju and his friend were released after their documents were cleared by senior police officer Mushtaq Khab and scouts major, said an official of Dir police station.
Following media reports, a Rajasthan Police team reached Anju’s house in Bhiwadi to inquire about her.
Her husband Arvind told the police that she had left home on Thursday on the pretext of going to Jaipur, but later the family came to know that she was in Pakistan.
“He left home to meet his friend. I spoke to him on WhatsApp a few days ago and came to know that he is in Lahore,” Arvind told the police.
He said they got married in 2007 and have been living together since then.
“Anju’s husband said that she left home on Thursday. He had a valid passport,” Bhiwadi Assistant Superintendent of Police Sujeet Shankar told PTI.
He said that no complaint was received from the family in this regard.
The couple works in a private firm in Bhiwadi and has a 15-year-old daughter and a six-year-old son
Arvind told the media at his home that his wife told his sister that he was in Lahore and later she also spoke to him.
He said he would talk to her and ask her to go back, insisting she hoped he would return home.
He said his passport was issued in 2020 because he wanted to apply for a job abroad.
Arvind said that he was not aware that he was communicating with anyone on social media.
A senior UP police official said on Sunday that Anju was born in Kailore village of Jalaun district in Uttar Pradesh’s Bundelkhand region but has no connection with the village.
Kailore is located about 70 km from the district headquarters in the Madhavgarh development block of Jalaun district.
“While issuing a passport, a person has to mention his place of birth. Apart from the place of birth, everything is related to Rajasthan. The passport was made in Delhi, and has nothing to do with village Kailore in Jalaun district,” Superintendent of Police Iraj Raja told PTI.
There are striking similarities between the stories of Anju and Seema Golam Haider, a Pakistani mother of four who came to India in 2019 to live with Sachin Meena, a Hindu man, while playing PUBG.
However, unlike Seema who entered India without a visa through Nepal with her four children under the age of seven, Anju crossed the Wagah-Attari border from India legally into Pakistan.
Seema, 30, and Sachin, 22, live in Greater Noida’s Rabupura area near Delhi, where he runs a provision store, Uttar Pradesh police said.
On July 4 Seema was arrested by the local police for illegally entering India and Meena was detained for harboring illegal immigrants. However, both of them got bail from a local court on July 7 and are living together with her four children in a house in Rabupura.
Seema wrote to President Draupadi Murmu to grant her Indian citizenship.
The two incidents come at a time when bilateral relations between India and Pakistan have come to a near standstill over the Kashmir issue and cross-border terrorism emanating from Pakistan.
(Except for the headline, this story was not edited by NDTV staff and appeared on a syndicated feed.)
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