The Pakistani wives of former Kashmiri militants who returned from to J&K under a rehabilitation scheme announced for surrendered militants by the previous UPA government have urged the External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj to provide them travel documents.
At a press conference held at Kashmir Press Club here the women said that the state government was denying them travel documents to visit their parents in Pakistan. They also urged the Governments of India and Pakistan to address their grievances on humanitarian grounds.
“We urge Sushma Swaraj ji to intervene to either provide us Indian citizenship and travel documents or deport us back to Pakistan,” said one of the women at the press conference. “We can’t live like this. We want to meet our parents back home. Our children want to meet their grand parents”.
The women said their plight shouldn’t be politicised.
The women came to Kashmir in the years after 2010 as part of the rehabilitation policy announced by the then state government for the Kashmiri youth who had crossed over to Pakistan or PoK for arms training and wanted to return to a normal life in the state. These women are the wives of these former militants.
