- Anant Zanan and Imran Qureshi
- BBC Hindi
Mulayam and Ikra got married in Nepal last year
An Indian man was arrested for helping a Pakistani woman enter the country illegally and obtain a fake identity card in January.
The woman he helped was his wife.
Mulayam Singh Yadav, 21, from India, and Ikra Jewani, 19, from Pakistan, met and fell in love online three years ago, while playing the board game Ludo. But they both knew that it would be difficult for them to be together.
India and Pakistan have a fraught relationship, as the two neighboring countries have fought three wars since 1947, when India gained independence and Pakistan was divided. This is what makes it difficult for people to obtain visas to see each other.
Last September, Mulayam and Ikra traveled to Nepal, where they got married. Then they traveled to the Indian city of Bangalore, the capital of Karnataka state, and lived together.
But their happy life turned into a tragedy in January, after the young woman was arrested for entering India illegally, and the young man was arrested on charges of fraud, forgery, and providing shelter to a foreign national, without proper documents.
Icra was deported to Pakistan last week, while Mulayam is in jail in Bangalore.
The Yadav family, who live in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, have been devastated by the arrests. They say the couple’s story is simply a love story.
“We want them both back home,” says Yadav’s brother Jitlal. “We understand the situation between India and Pakistan. But all they have done is fall in love.”
The police seem to agree, too. “Besides illegal entry and forgery, it appears to be a love story,” says a senior Bangalore police official who asked not to be identified.
This love story started in 2020, during the COVID-19 quarantine.
Yadav worked as a security guard for an IT company in Bangalore while Jiwani was a student in Hyderabad, Pakistan.
The two began a long distance relationship after meeting online. But Jiwani was under increasing pressure from her family to marry.
On Yadav’s suggestion, she left Pakistan and traveled to Nepal via Dubai to meet him. Police say the two men married in a Hindu ceremony at a temple there and then moved to India.
But Jeewani did not have the documents required to stay in India, so police say Yadav arranged a fake ‘adhar’ card, an Indian identity document, for her.
According to the police, Yadav went out every day to work while Jiwani stayed at home.
But she made WhatsApp calls to her mother in Pakistan, which led the police to her.
Bangalore police officials say they were on high alert last month because two major international events were scheduled to take place in the city in February: the Aero India airshow and the G20 finance ministers’ meeting.
After further investigation, Jiwani was arrested for illegal entry, handed over to the Regional Aliens Registration Office on January 20, and deported to Pakistan in February.
S said. Girish, deputy commissioner of police in Whitefield district in Bangalore, told the BBC: “So far, there is no crime against her other than entering the country illegally. But the investigation is ongoing.”
The BBC was unable to reach Jiwani or her family in Pakistan for comment. Earlier this week, news agency BTI reported that her father had confirmed that she had arrived home, and that they did not want to “talk about the matter”.
Shanti Devi, Yadav’s mother, says she hopes the governments of both countries will help reunite the couple. “We don’t care if she is Muslim or Pakistani, she is our daughter-in-law. We will take good care of her.”
