CHANDIGARH: Since Thursday morning, Pakistani nationals currently visiting India have been making a beeline for the Attari-Wagah border to return to their country. There is also uncertainty over trade with Afghanistan that carries on through this border.
They have a 48-hour deadline to leave the country following India’s decision to suspend the SAARC Visa Exemption Scheme (SVES) in the wake of Tuesday’s Pahalgam massacre.
By morning, several Pakistani families had reached the Integrated Check Post (ICP) at Attari, near Amritsar, to return home via the Attari-Wagah land route.
A family from Karachi said they went to Delhi to meet their relatives. “We came here to attend an event. We had a visa for 45 days but must leave India in this condition. We came here on April 15. Closing the border is a wrong move. There should be brotherhood between the two nations. But whatever is happening is wrong,” said a family member who did not give his name.
Condemning the Pahalgam attack, Pakistani national Mansoor, who came to India on a 90-day visa with his family on April 15, said, “It should not have happened. Whosoever has done it, it is completely wrong. We want mutual brotherhood and friendship between the two nations. But we are returning home today.”
A few Indian nationals with visas to travel to Pakistan also reached the ICP on Thursday hoping to go to Pakistan, including a Gujarat family who intended to meet their relatives in Karachi. “We got the visa two months back,” said an elderly family member. However, when told that the Attari land-transit post had been shut, he said they were prepared to return home if asked.
Two men from Rajasthan, who reached Amritsar yesterday evening to go to Pakistan, said they were unaware of the shutting down of the Attari land-transit post. Shaitan Singh, who was to go to Pakistan for his wedding, said, “What the terrorists have done is wrong. We are not being allowed to go to Pakistan as the border is closed; let us see what will happen now.”
Surinder Singh, who was going to the neighbouring country for his brother’s wedding, said the wedding will have to be postponed. “My grandmother and her four sons stay in Pakistan, and her one son stays in India. The attack on tourists in Pahalgam was very wrong.”
Sources said that approximately a few hundred Indians in Pakistan are likely to return before May 1.