AURANGABAD: Haseena Begam had returned home to Aurangabad on January 26 after spending 18 long years in a Pakistani prison. Just after getting down from the train at the Aurangabad railway station, the 65-year-old had said it felt like she was “entering paradise.”
That happiness did not last long. Early on Tuesday morning, just a fortnight after her return home, Haseena Begam died of a heart attack.
Her relatives said that around 1.30 am on Tuesday, Begam started experiencing chest pain. She woke up her nephew Zainuddin Chishti. Soon, her health deteriorated and she was struggling even to breathe. Chishti immediately called for a doctor and an ambulance. However, before she could be taken to hospital, Begam had collapsed. The doctor who came to check her declared her dead.
Since her return, Begam had been staying with Chishti in a rented accommodation in the Rashidpura area of the city. Within days of her return, Begam had come to know that a plot of land she had purchased in 2000 had been grabbed.
“She was very happy to be back home. However, she was shocked to find that her plot, which was the only property she owned, had been encroached upon,” Chishti said.
Incidentally, the registration documents for this same property had helped her gain freedom from the Pakistani jail.
Begam spent nearly two decades in a Pakistani prison after being arrested on suspicion of being a spy. She had gone to Pakistan to meet some relatives but had lost her passport and other belongings. She could not tell the Pakistani police where her relatives lived as she had lost their address details too. Back home in India, her name got deleted from the voters’ list over the years after she was not found to be residing at her husband’s home in Saharanpur (UP) or even in her native Aurangabad.
In the absence of any identity proof, the Aurangabad police finally traced the registration documents of a 600 sq ft plot in her name that she had purchased in 2000 to establish her identity and facilitate her return to India.
“I could not recall the exact location of the plot that she had purchased. The police dug out copies of the registration. Later, when we went to the plot, we found that a suspected land shark had demolished the old structure and built his house there,” said Chishti.
On learning about her demise, Aurangabad police commissioner Nikhil Gupta said, “It is unfortunate that she breathed her last before getting justice. On receiving her complaint last week, we had tasked the economic offences wing (EOW) to investigate the case on priority so that she gets justice at the earliest.”
An officer in the EOW had even visited Begam on Monday and initiated the investigation. He left her house saying that he would return on Tuesday to record her statement. But before it could be done, she breathed her last.
Begam was handed over to the Indian authorities in December 2020, but she could not travel back to Aurangabad due to the Covid-19 restrictions and the ongoing farmers’ protest. She was accommodated at the hostel of the Guru Nanak Dev Hospital in Amritsar before being sent to Aurangabad.