This saga of love, courage, sacrifice and separation from Greater Noida in Uttar Pradesh is somewhat like the 2004 Bollywood movie, ‘Veer Zara’. The only difference is that in the Shah Rukh Khan-starrer, an Indian national crosses the border for his lady love – played by Preity Zinta, a Pakistani national – but in this real-life story, a Pakistani woman crossed the border into India to be with the man she loves.
There are also reports of the woman, identified as Seema Gulam Haider, being a spy. She, her lover Sachin Meena and his father have been booked under the Passport Act and Foreigners Act. The duo even spoke to the media and narrated their story. Seema said she was from Karachi and fell in love with Sachin in 2019.
“Since then, Sachin and I decided to be together and, hence, we started planning how I could reach India. Sachin, with the help of available routes on YouTube, helped me sneak into India,” she said.
She added: “But we are not spies, we are simple human beings who are in love with each other and want to spend the rest of our lives together. Please help us, we have nothing to do with politics and we don’t have a hidden agenda; please don’t politicise our relationship. I want to stay in India.”
Police have booked Seema for entering Indian territory in an allegedly illegal manner. They have also registered a case against Sachin and his father for allegedly helping her and providing shelter to a foreign national.
“The woman gamer, identified as Seema Gulam Haider, who illegally crossed the border with her four children has been booked under relevant sections of the Passport Act and the Foreigners Act. We have also booked her lover, Sachin Meena, and his father for providing shelter to citizens of an enemy country,” said Greater Noida deputy commissioner of police SK Khan.
According to police, it all began a couple of years ago in 2019 when Seema, in her late 20s, met Sachin through the online game, PUBG. While playing the game for hours online, the two fell in love and their bond grew so strong that Seema decided to travel all the way from Pakistan to meet Sachin.
Khan said Seema illegally entered Indian territory on May 11 through Nepal and had since taken a bus to Greater Noida to meet Sachin in Greater Noida. She has been living in Rabupura since May 13.
“It was only after a local lawyer, whom the duo were consulting, raised an alarm, police swung into action and detained the foreign nationals and booked them,” Khan said.
The DCP said during interrogation, the duo told police that they stayed at a hotel in Kathmandu for a week in March, following which they decided to sneak into India and get married. Seema got married in 2014 and had four children with her husband with the youngest born in 2019. Her husband was working as a mason in Karachi and went to Saudi Arabia in 2019, following which she started playing online games and got in touch with Sachin. In March, the couple decided to meet in Nepal.
Police said though Seema had studied till Class V, she was well-versed in video games and social media. “We have found close to 50 games on her mobile phones, two video cassettes of her wedding, one family registration certificate, four birth certificates of her children, an ID card issued by Pakistan National Database and Registration Authority, five vaccination cards and one bus ticket from Pokhara to Delhi,” they said.
Seema told police that she had not met her husband since 2019 and, before leaving for India, she got separated from him by saying ‘talaaq’ thrice in a row. She also told police that she had sold her farmland for Rs 12 lakh to bear the transportation cost.
The three accused were produced before a magistrate in Surajpur and remanded in judicial custody for 14 days. Seema’s four minor children will stay with her mother, as directed by the magistrate, said senior officers linked with the case.
Comments
0 comment