Siraj Muhammad Khan was 10 years old when he boarded the wrong train and accidentally crossed a border, forever altering the course of his life.

Now 38, he has been living in a rented room in Battagram in the northern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province for the last six years. He currently shares the space with his wife and three children, who are Indian nationals, and who were separated from him in 2022 but arrived again in the country this July on a one-month visa. Their Pakistani visas were first extended till September, and the family is now hoping for another extension.

Almost three decades after his accidental trip, Siraj once again faces the uncertainty of being separated from his loved ones.

A CHILD’S CURIOSITY

Siraj was born in the village of Sharkool in the Konsh Valley, on the outskirts of Mansehra district, in 1986. One of five siblings, he left home one day, with the intention to go to Karachi and meet his uncle, and also to escape his father’s opprobrium over his poor results in school.

Sometime in 1996, 10-year-old Siraj boarded a bus from the town of Mansehra and arrived in Lahore. He hiked from the bus terminal to the railway station, and got on a train that he thought would take him to Karachi.

As a child, Mansehra’s Siraj Khan boarded the wrong train and ended up in India, where he built a life over the next two decades. Deported back after 22 years, his life remains at risk, as the border between India and Pakistan threatens to split his family apart…

But in his excitement, he had made a grave error. “I got on the train, and from then onward, my life started writing new chapters of deprivation,” he tells Eos. The train in question was the Samjhauta Express, which ran between Delhi and Lahore.

Inside the cabin, says Siraj, he didn’t notice any discernible difference in people except that the women were wearing “ghagras” [long skirts]. Upon overhearing that the ticket checker was coming by, Siraj mingled with the children of the families on the train, and avoided his attention.

At the border crossing, according to Siraj’s recollections, they had to pass through an immigration counter, where passengers were getting “their booklets [passports] stamped,” he tells Eos. But they weren’t asking the children about the booklet, he continues. “I was able to pass the counter along with the other children, maybe because the immigration process was not so strict back in the day,” he reflects.

Just before arriving in Delhi, recalls Siraj, a man asked him where he was from. He told him Mansehra. This rattled the man, who inquired if the Mansehra in question was in Pakistan. With the confidence of a 10-year-old, Siraj answered in the affirmative. “I told him, yes, we are in Pakistan, and I am going to Karachi.”

It was at this point Siraj learned that he had taken the wrong train, and that he was now in India.

The kind stranger took Siraj to his house, where he spent the next three to four days. “After that, he told me to leave, as he feared action from the government or law-enforcement agencies for sheltering an undocumented child,” explains Siraj.

The stranger then booked a seat for him on the Banaras Express, which travels from Delhi to Mumbai. The man also handed him some money. 

While handling the “strange” currency notes, the gravity of the situation began to dawn on him, says Siraj. He insisted that he wanted to return home, but the stranger explained to him that it wasn’t so simple. “Instead, he told me to get on the train and get off at the last station, which was Mumbai,” he continues.

WARD OF THE STATE

However, when the train crossed into Gujarat, he was taken into custody by the local police, who then handed him over to a children’s home in Ahmedabad. The record of his stay at the home would later be used as evidence in court to substantiate his story of accidental migration. 

He would spend three years at the shelter in Ahmedabad. During this time, narrates Siraj, he was taken to several locations as part of efforts to reunite him with his family. He says he repeatedly told them that he was from Mansehra, to which the standard response was that it wasn’t possible for a 10-year-old from Pakistan to end up in India. “They even took me to Kashmir and Simla, because they said my facial features resembled the people of the area.”

Upon his insistence, continues Siraj, officials agreed to write to the address that he remembered, and sent his picture along with the letter. However, the letter went unanswered.

Siraj says that he learned much later, upon his return to Pakistan in 2018, that his maternal uncle had received the letter and shared it with his father. “I was told that my father refused to acknowledge me in the presence of postal service officials, although he informed the family that I was living in India,” he says.

FINDING FAMILY

After three years, with hopes of being reunited with his family on the wane, he decided to escape from the shelter. He made his way to Mumbai, via the same Banaras Express, and started living on the streets. He braved severe weather, days without food and more during that time.

This continued for a few months, with him doing odd jobs, until he was employed to clean dishes at a wedding hall. He also learned how to cook and worked there for nine years. With his salary, he also rented a room in Mumbai’s Vijay Nagar slum.

It was here that he met Sajida, who he would marry in 2005. They had their first child, a girl, a year later. In 2010, the couple had twin boys. 

“We were neighbours for a long time,” Sajida tells Eos, before adding that the marriage was decided by her elders. 

Siraj was no longer completely on his own and, in Sajida, he had found a loving and loyal companion, who would stick with him through thick and thin. “He would really miss his family on Eid and get very emotional,” recalls Sajida.

Meanwhile, after the birth of his first child, Siraj applied for citizenship, and he soon received his aadhar (identification) card, ration card and voter card.

On the basis of his aadhar card, he got the PAN [personal account number] card issued by tax authorities in India. After that, he was able to open a bank account and get his driving licence, and was no longer an undocumented migrant.

THE DESIRE FOR HOME

Although he became an Indian citizen in 2009 and had a family there, Siraj still yearned for home. Now that he was documented, he knew that visiting his homeland had become a distinct possibility. 

He went to various law-enforcement agencies and narrated his story, asking them to allow him a visit to Pakistan. But in Indian records, he was now their citizen. 

To prove that he was from Pakistan, Siraj wrote to his maternal uncle living in Karachi. The uncle connected Siraj to his father, who was alive at the time. His father sent back his school documents, which provided proof that he was born in Pakistan.

When he showed this proof to Indian authorities, however, they booked him for illegal border crossing and put him behind bars. 

It took a year for the courts to accept his bail petition. However, the court also decided to deport Siraj to Pakistan, but the high court of Bombay issued a stay on the order in 2014. Meanwhile, he was given a six-month prison term over the illegal border crossing charge. During this time, says Siraj, he was kept in isolation and not allowed to meet his family.

Things changed in 2018, when Pakistan’s foreign ministry confirmed his citizenship through a letter to the Indian authorities. Sajida’s plea that her husband be allowed to stay in India on humanitarian grounds fell on deaf ears.

Siraj says he was deported to Pakistan straight away, despite the high court’s order. “I was given 15 minutes with my family before being taken to [the] Wagah [border crossing].” 

At the border, an Indian official told him that he would never be able to step foot into India again. “I went into a spiral at that point and even tried to kill myself, but the officials intervened,” he tells Eos.

GETTING THE THIRD DEGREE

Once in Pakistan, continues Siraj, he was interrogated for three days by officials of the army and intelligence agencies, after which he was allowed to board a bus to Mansehra. 

On March 10, 2018, nearly 22 years after his accidental journey, he was back home. 

But he didn’t receive the reception he had expected. He was eyed with suspicion by his relatives, including his mother and siblings, and says he was routinely referred to as an Indian spy, a Hindu and a kafir.

Siraj says that he has been miserable over the last six years that he has been in Pakistan. “My brother says I came back for the property,” he continues. “I just wanted to see my family,” he adds.

It took Siraj over a year to get the required documentation to become a Pakistani citizen, including getting a passport, so that he could travel back to India to meet his family. But India wouldn’t grant him a visa.

In that time, though, Sajida and his children travelled from India to Pakistan, spending four years with him between 2018 and 2022.

For Sajida, the reception was even worse than that faced by Siraj. “His family wouldn’t even share their utensils with us and made snide remarks about my complexion,” she says. The family even tried to convince Siraj “to leave his Indian wife and family,” says Sajida. “We keep hearing that it is difficult for Muslims in India, but I never faced such hatred there.”

Sajida says that the children were also ostracised — by family members and classmates in the schools where they were enrolled. “We tried not to tell them we are from India,” says Siraj’s eldest daughter, 18-year-old Zara. “But they found out and mocked us over it,” she continues. “We confine ourselves to this room because it can be scary,” she says. 

Four years later, Sajida and the children were forced to return to India and were unable to come back for another two years. Those two years without Siraj were hell, recalls his wife. She says her family in India also had limited contact with them during that time. “Initially, my brother would check up on me. But he started eyeing us with suspicion due to our Pakistan visit,” she says.

For Zara, being separated from her father has been a traumatising ordeal. She sat for the 10th grade papers in India, before coming to Pakistan this time. There are also plans for her wedding once the family gets back to India. “But I don’t want any of it without my baba by my side,” she tells Eos.

Inayat and Ijaz, the twins, wear an equally forlorn expression.

ON A PRAYER

For now, Siraj’s family is back together, and they are hoping to stay that way for as long as possible: whether in India or Pakistan. 

Siraj says he wrote to the Pakistani foreign ministry explaining his situation and seeking a visa extension for his family. “But they want chai paani,” he adds, referring to bribes. “I am a labourer who lives in a rented room. How do they expect me to have the money for bribes?” he laments.

He also wants the Indian government to let him visit the country, so that he can attend his daughter’s wedding. “It has been six years since I was deported,” he says. Overstaying or other visa violations can result in a ban of two to 10 years, depending on the discretion of the Indian Ministry of Home Affairs.

Whether the family stays together or is forced to split depends on the two countries, but Islamabad and Delhi have a complex and mostly adversarial relationship. Will they pay heed to Siraj and his family’s plea?

The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Battagram, KP

Published in Dawn, EOS, September 22nd, 2024