SRINAGAR: CPI(M) leader, M Y Tarigami has asked the government to take note of the plight of Pakistani spouses of Kashmiri militants who had shun the violence and returned to the mainstream.
“A few hundred Pakistani women married to Kashmiris who went to Pakistan for arms training after an armed conflict broke out in the region in 1989 and returned back to the Valley to live a peaceful life, especially after the Omar Abdullah-led government unveiled a policy for their return in 2010, are living a miserable life as neither they have been given citizenship rights not travel documents,” Tarigami said in a statement issued today.
These women and their children can neither go back nor stay with their rights in Kashmir. For the past several years, they have been protesting in different parts of Kashmir to seek citizenship rights and travel documents to visit Pakistan, but nobody in the government is giving them a hearing, he said.
“Government of India should either should deport them or provide them with the travel documents so that they can visit their parents, siblings and relatives across the border. Also their children must be given travel documents so that if they want they could acquire education outside or work outside,” he said.
Tarigami further said: “It is a humanitarian issue and must be looked from a humanitarian point of view. The 2010 promise of rehabilitation was all illusionary, but now time has come when the Government of India needs to take immediate decision over their plight”.
