Karachi: The intriguing story of how a “shy” teenage Pakistani girl traveled to Bengaluru on her own to meet and marry an Indian man, told by her uncle, who said she sold her jewelry and bought air tickets to Dubai and beyond. Borrowed money from friends. Kathmandu from where she came to India. The girl, identified as Iqra Jiwani, was recovered last month from Bengaluru, where she was staying with Mulayam Singh Yadav, a Hindu man who is now in jail. He was handed over to Pakistani authorities at the Wagah border on Sunday.
They met online and fell in love and later decided to get married. After this she reached Nepal a few months back and they got married.
Family sources in Pakistan’s Sindh province, who did not wish to be named, claimed that Iqra had returned home after her father, uncle and mother went to Lahore after Indian authorities handed them over to their Pakistani counterparts.
The intriguing story began last September when Iqra went missing after attending college.
Requests to speak to Iqra were not successful but her father Sohail Biwani said that the matter is closed once and for all.
“We still don’t know how she mustered up the courage to go to India on her own. She has always been a shy girl. Mysterious like all of us,” he added.
A family source said that the family has still not recovered from the shock of what happened in the last four months.
The question still remains that how did 16-year-old Iqra travel from Karachi to Dubai, then to Kathmandu and from there to India.
“And she made this long and dangerous journey because she had fallen in love with an Indian man whom she believed to be a Muslim software engineer, Sameer Ansari,” a family source said.
Ansari was actually 26-year-old Mulayam Singh Yadav, a security guard in Bengaluru whom Iqra met while playing an online Ludo game.
Iqra sold her jewelry and borrowed money from her college friends to buy air tickets to Dubai and then to Kathmandu, from where Yadav, from Uttar Pradesh, arranged to bring her to Bengaluru via the Indo-Nepal border. Where he met her and took her along. him to his house.
Her uncle Afzal Jiwani said that Iqra went to Dubai and then to Kathmandu because she could not get a visa to India.
He said that Iqra was recovered by the Indian police only after neighbors in the area where Yadav complained to the police after seeing her praying.
Afzal said, “Some neighbors got suspicious when they saw a girl offering namaz in a Hindu house because she was living there under the Hindu name Rava.”
He also confirmed that Indian police recovered Iqra soon after the complaint, but kept her in a shelter home, where she was questioned by police and intelligence on how she arrived in India.
After changing her name to Rava, Yadav also got an Aadhaar card made for Iqra and later she also applied for an Indian passport.
Afzal said, “But we are thankful to the government of Pakistan and India for helping us recover him and ending this terrible chapter for us.”
He said that the girl has been apologizing continuously ever since she returned to Pakistan. She claimed that the Indian man tricked his niece by posing as a Muslim boy when the two met on social media while playing the online Ludo game.
The Jiwani family, which has a business in Shahi Bazar in Hyderabad city in southern Sindh province, said Iqra realized her mistake after reaching Bengaluru and meeting Yadav as she started calling her mother on WhatsApp to tell her everything. done.
A senior police officer said the family informed them about the call and they liaised through necessary channels with Pakistan’s Foreign Office, which in turn contacted their Indian counterparts to help locate and recover the girl.
Dr Fatima Sehgal, a psychiatrist who specializes in addiction and the effects of social media, told PTI that Iqra’s case did not come as a big surprise to her as this is the power of online friendship.
“When someone, especially a girl, comes from a conservative family background and is an introvert, she easily gets into friendship on online platforms and they develop a very strong trust, bond and many a times, also love the person they met online,” she said.
Fatima said that when such a girl or boy befriends someone who listens to them, protects them and expresses love for them, they see a movie-like future with them.
“Therefore, in today’s time it is very important for parents to know about the bad effects of social media and use them in their parenting,” he said.