Things seem to be looking up for Seema Haider, a Pakistani national, and her Indian boyfriend, Sachin Meena. On Friday, a court in Noida granted them bail and allowed them to stay together till the case continues. They walked out of prison on Saturday.
Seema (27) entered India with her four children through Nepal in May to live with Sachin (22) a daily wager from Gautam Buddh Nagar in Uttar Pradesh. They had fallen in love while playing an online game. It was going well for them until earlier this week when they went to a lawyer to seek help in “registering their marriage”. The lawyer tipped off the police and the two were arrested. The woman was arrested for illegally entering India and the man for sheltering her.
Judicial Magistrate Nazim Akbar of Gautam Buddh Nagar Court on Friday granted bail to the duo after advocate Heman Krishna Parashar argued in court that the woman had “accidently” entered India to meet her “lover” and that she had no idea about the repercussions of the same.
“The woman had no ill intension in entering the country and she came here only to marry her lover,” Mr. Parashar told the court, which granted bail to the duo on a surety bond of ₹30,000 and with clauses that she would not leave India without informing the competent authority and would not change her address without intimating the court.
Seema will be living at Sachin’s house in Gautam Buddh Nagar. The two had earlier appealed to Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and Prime Minister Narendra Modi to help them.
“All I want is to live with Sachin. We have already married in a temple and just wanted to register the same. My kids are happy with Sachin and we want to live like a family,” said Seema, who began interacting with Sachin in 2020 while playing the online game PUBG.
She told the police that she married Ghulam Haider of Karachi in 2014 and the couple had four children. She said her husband, who works in Saudi Arabia, used to beat her. He had not met them once in the past four years.
She decided to meet Sachin for the first time in January, and the two finally met in Nepal. After staying there for some days, they headed back to their respective countries. In May, Seema, along with her children, visited Nepal on a tourist visa and from there they boarded a bus to India.
Sachin is happy to be a father of six-year-old boy and three young girls. He had never thought that a video game would change his life.
“We are happy together. Let us be,” he said.
Published - July 08, 2023 09:04 pm IST
