What Is Our Fault?": Families Torn Apart by India-Pakistan Border Visa Freeze
A painful choice: stay for love or return to family.
For 61-year-old Shahida Adrees, what once felt like a simple life decision has now become a heartbreaking dilemma. A Pakistani by birth, Shahida moved to India in 2002 after marrying her maternal cousin, Adrees Khan, who lives in Punjab. Together, they built a quiet life—Khan working as a driver while Shahida cared for their child and home.
Living in India on a long-term visa, Shahida used to make regular trips to Pakistan to visit her siblings. But everything changed last week.
Following a deadly militant attack in Indian-administered Kashmir that left 26 dead, India suspended nearly all visas for Pakistani nationals. Pakistan, while denying involvement in the attack, retaliated by also suspending visas for Indian citizens.
When Shahida heard the news, she was faced with an agonizing choice: travel back to Pakistan and risk never returning to her husband, or stay in India and possibly never see her family again. She chose to stay.
“I was planning to visit my ailing aunt,” she says. “But if I had gone, I wouldn’t have been let back in. Now that I’ve stayed, I may never see my brothers and sisters again.”
A Border That Splits Families, Not Just Nations
Shahida’s situation mirrors that of countless other families torn apart by the escalating visa bans. Despite decades of political hostility, marriages between Indian and Pakistani citizens are still common, largely due to shared cultural roots and family ties that date back before the 1947 partition.
The India-Pakistan border runs not only through land but through families—many Indians have loved ones in Pakistan and vice versa. Some couples marry cousins across the border; others fall in love online and fight to be together. They often rely on long-term visas or spend years navigating the complex path to citizenship.
This week, as the new visa restrictions took hold, scenes of grief spread across news networks and social media—young children crying, elderly parents pleading, and spouses clutching documents in desperation.
"We’re Not Militants—Why Are We Being Punished?"
One particularly emotional story is that of 17-year-old Mohammed Ayat, a Pakistani national who recently came to India to visit his maternal relatives. His mother, an Indian citizen, had been living in Pakistan on a visa awaiting renewal. Now, she’s stuck in India while her children have had to return without her.
“I came here with my mother. Now they’re asking me to leave without her. How can I do that?” Ayat told ANI news agency in tears. “They can punish the militants—but what did we do wrong?”
The BBC has reached out to India’s Ministry of External Affairs for comment, but there has been no official response as of yet.
Love, Suspended by Politics
While governments continue to clash over national security and political blame, families like Shahida’s and Ayat’s are the ones paying the price. They are not militants, not politicians—just people hoping to stay connected with the people they love on the other side of a border that grows more impenetrable each day.
And so, for now, they wait—gripped by uncertainty, clinging to hope, and asking the one question no government has answered:
“What is our fault?”
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