At the last hearing, the High Court had asked the Centre to file a reply to Siraj Khan’s petition seeking a direction to government to send him back to PoK.
The Centre had asked for a month’s time to file a reply but the court allowed only a week, saying the petitioner had called for urgency as his parents were aged and ill.
Khan, who claims to have accidentally crossed Attari border in 1995, has said he was not getting a suitable job here and the only way to live with dignity and pride was to return home in PoK.
According to Khan’s lawyer Ejaz Naqvi, the petitioner was born in 1985 at Manshera in PoK. As his parents insisted on his going to school every day, he got fed up and decided to run away. One day he bunked school and caught a train which brought him to Attari border where he saw people cross the barbed wire fence. He too joined them and landed in India.
The petition claims that Khan reached Delhi in December, 1995. After a few days he went to Varanasi where he worked as a waiter in a restaurant before reaching Mumbai.
However, in 1998, when he tried to return to PoK, he was caught by a railway ticket examiner in Ahmedabad who handed him over to police. Khan then spent a year at a juvenile home in Gujarat from where he was released in 1999.
Thereafter he came back to Mumbai and got a job with a catering company. Once again he attempted to go to PoK through Wagah border but the authorities denied him entry and threatened to put him behind bars, Khan has said in the petition.
Khan returned to Mumbai where he met Sajida and they married. The couple has three kids and stay in Wadala.
Khan said he approached Maharashtra CID in 2009 to seek their help in going back to PoK but was arrested under Passport Act and Foreign Citizen Act. He was later enlarged on bail.
