Crossing the Wagah Border into India, she kissed the ground and touched the soil to her forehead — a gesture that External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said “indeed made her India’s daughter”. Uzma Ahmed, the Indian woman from New Delhi, who was allegedly forced to marry a Pakistani man at gunpoint during her visit there, returned to India on Thursday. Forced to marry Tahir Ali, she managed to return to India after the Islamabad High Court allowed her to leave Pakistan, forcing Ali, who had taken away her immigration papers, to return them to her. Tears welled up as she hugged her mother and her daughter.
At a press conference organised by the Ministry of External Affairs, she recounted a tale of horror, of being forced to live in a “Taliban-like region” in Pakistan, which she described as a “well of death”. Questions were not allowed at the conference, so the details of her story were often hazy.
She said she had met Ali in Malaysia, and the two had fallen in love. She left for Pakistan with him sometime in the beginning of May and planned to return by May 10 or 12. “After we crossed the Wagah Border, nothing felt right.” At some point, she was given a sleeping pill by Ali and taken to remote Buner district in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, where she was married to Ali on May 3, allegedly at gunpoint. Uzma said had she stayed there for a few more days she would have been dead and profusely thanked the Indian mission for enabling her return. She said she wanted to meet PM Modi to personally thank him. Swaraj thanked the Pakistani establishment and judiciary for their help. She also had words of praise for Uzma’s counsel Barrister Shahnawaz Moon and Justice Mohsin Akhtar Kiyani of the Islamabad HC.
