Several brides from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) on Friday held a protest along with children in Srinagar to put pressure on the Centre and the State government to issue them travel documents to cross the Line of Control (LoC) and visit their families.
Wearing veils and carrying children in their arms, these PoK women, who married Kashmiri men when they went for arms training across the LoC in the 1990s, appealed to the governments of Pakistan and India to devise a mechanism “to allow free movement to them across the LoC”.
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“Many women from (PoK) are suffering from depression. We are neither given citizenship nor being deported back. Our grievances should be addressed by the government,” said a bride from the PoK during a press conference in Srinagar.
She claimed that around 350 women and children used the Nepal route to return to Kashmir along with their husbands after availing of the rehabilitation policy of the Omar Abdullah government in 2010.
“However, since we came to this place, we are denied rights. We should be allowed to meet our families in Pakistan,” said another bride.
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An official said over 150 brides from PoK have settled in Kashmir along with their ex-militant husbands.
A J&K High Court judgment, issued in 1971 in the Mohsin Shah case, had observed that no deportation exercise could take place for such couples because “one person had merely travelled from one part of India to another”.