After the Amarnath land grab, deportations

Now the Indian state decides that it can deport Kashmiris as "foreign nationals" for visiting their relatives in Azad Kashmir forty years ago. I wonder if anyone has statistics on the creation of a Kashmiri population-in-exile over the six decades of Indian rule.

For visiting AJK at the age of 10, 55-year-old put on deportation list

Greater Kashmir January 5, 2009
NASEER A GANAI

Srinagar, Jan 4: In October 2008, Abdul Wahid Bhat, a resident of Khanyar in old city here, was relaxing in his home when policemen conveyed to him that he is on deportation list. He was asked to leave India in 15 days.
“I was shocked at first,” Wahid says. “My family is here, my children are here, relatives here and still I am told to leave Jammu and Kashmir, my birth place in 15 days. At this age where will I go? ” He asks.
In 1965, Abdul Wahid Bhat, then ten years old, along with his aunt went to AJK on a valid document. He said his aunt had children in AJK who had left Kashmir in 1947. He stayed there for three months. And soon, on September 5, 1965 India-Pakistan war broke out and continued till September 17, 1965.
During the war he had reached Wagah border to cross to India but he was pushed back. He stayed back in other Kashmir. His aunt died there. Later, he said, his father and mother traveled to AJK and brought him back here after he obtaining Pakistani passport for traveling to Kashmir.
Back home, he surrendered Pakistani passport before the Indian authorities and started living as a bonafide citizen of Jammu and Kashmir.
But in 1980, police registered an FIR under Foreigners Act against him in the police station Khanyar. Subsequently, in 1983 a challan was presented before the Court. He pleaded in the Court that he didn’t acquire Pakistani passport voluntarily. He faced the trial and after eight years, the Court acquitted him.
Wahid says for past 29 years he has run his family business and has not violated any condition of citizenship of being permanent resident of the state. He is also enrolled by the Election Commission of India as permanent resident of Jammu and Kashmir.
But still in October 2008, he was shocked when secretary Home Department Government of India through CID informed him to leave India and the Jammu and Kashmir state. “I went to Home Department but they didn’t handover the deportation order to me,” he says.
Forced by the circumstances he went to the High Court challenging the order of the Home Department through his counsel Mir Shafaqat Hussain. The Court has issued the orders to the state not to disturb the present status of Wahid. “Why I should be deported. I have my roots here and the Court has already acquitted me,” he says.