Now, Imran Warsi Waits To Cross The Wagah Border

The Karachi native spent a decade in an Indian jail.

- Suhasini Haidar

For more than a decade, Imran Warsi has lived in limbo, without a sense of home or nationality. Next week, he will regain both, as police officials confirmed that he will be repatriated across the Wagah border to Pakistan and will be reunited with his parents in Karachi.

His story is similar to that of 33-year-old Hamid Ansari, who returned from Pakistan this week: a love story gone wrong, betrayal by friends or relatives who promised to help, long prison sentences, and ultimately freedom as a result of the efforts of strangers and good samaritans.

“I want to tell my family about all the good people I met here, who stood with me, and gave me strength. The way our media portrays India, I found nothing like that here. I only received love here,” Mr. Warsi told The Hindu on the phone. He spoke from the Shajehanabad police station, where he has been in custody despite completing his sentence in March.

A Pakistani from Karachi, Mr. Warsi married his cousin in Kolkata in 2004 after falling in love. When his visa ran out, her parents promised to help the couple get papers to travel to Pakistan, but didn’t.

Misled, betrayed

After four years, during which Imran and his wife Shaziya had two sons, Mr. Warsi says he lost patience, and was misguided by relatives into applying for an Indian passport using fraudulent papers. The same relatives then alerted the police and Mr. Warsi was arrested in Bhopal in 2008 on charges of terrorism and espionage.