In 2011, Gulzar Khan from Pakistan entered India illegally, married his lover and hid his actual id from her for the following eight years, till he was arrested. Now he’s ready to listen to if he might be deported again to Pakistan.

Successful cross-border love tales between Indians and Pakistanis are uncommon – relations are tense between the neighbours, who’ve fought three wars since they grew to become impartial nations in 1947. This makes it exhausting for folks to get visas to journey to see one another.

Several Indians and Pakistanis have landed in hassle after illegally crossing the border for love. In current years, many {couples} whose tales acquired media consideration have attributed their assembly to the web.

In the case of Gulzar Khan and Daulat Bi, it began with a fallacious quantity.

Mr Khan is from Sialkot area in Pakistan’s Punjab province (there’s a Punjab state in India as effectively, because the area was divided during Partition in 1947). Ms Bi is from the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh.

Mr Khan, who was working as a painter in Saudi Arabia, says he was attempting to name a former colleague in India in 2009. When he did not get by means of, he tried altering a digit right here and there, considering he might need jotted down a fallacious quantity.

“One of those random numbers connected him with me,” Ms Bi says.

She was slightly apprehensive about speaking to a stranger, she says. But he endured.

Mr Khan says he did inform Ms Bi on the primary name that he was from Punjab, however that he did not make clear that he meant the one in Pakistan. He additionally didn’t reveal that he was a Christian – for years, even after their marriage, Ms Bi assumed he was a Muslim like her.

Over the following two years, they spoke recurrently on the cellphone.

Ms Bi, who was a widow with a baby, says her relations and neighbours would taunt her for speaking to him.

“I used to tell him that it’s better that I die,” she says. But he promised to return and marry her.

Mr Khan claims that he made a number of unsuccessful makes an attempt to get a legitimate visa from the Indian embassy in Saudi Arabia.

Finally, he determined to impersonate an Indian citizen. “I told [authorities] that I lost my passport, that I was an Indian and wanted to return to India,” he says, and confirmed them an id card which had a black-and-white picture of an Indian man who appeared just like him.

He was detained and issued an emergency certificates, after which he was deported to India, he says. The BBC has contacted the Indian embassy in Saudi Arabia for remark.

Mr Khan arrived in India’s Hyderabad metropolis in January 2011 and inside weeks, the couple married and moved to Ms Bi’s village in Nandyal district in Andhra Pradesh. Upon his arrival, the native police questioned him however no case was registered.

For the following eight years, the 2 lived collectively and had 4 extra youngsters, with Mr Khan making a dwelling as a painter. He says he utilized for and obtained an Aadhaar biometric card and different id paperwork.

Mr Khan says he utterly reduce ties together with his household in Pakistan throughout this time. His uncle even visited Saudi Arabia to search out out what occurred to him.

“We thought he may have had an accident,” his sister Sheela Lal, who lives within the metropolis of Rawalpindi in Pakistan, informed BBC Urdu.

“As I lived with my new family, I started considering myself an Indian,” Mr Khan says. But quickly, he says, recollections of residence returned and he determined to go to Pakistan once more.

In 2019, he was arrested at a railway station within the neighbouring Indian state of Telangana whereas attempting to depart India with Ms Bi and their youngsters and charged with unlawful entry and procuring cast paperwork.

According to information stories, intelligence companies had tracked calls made by Mr Khan to Pakistan. The Hyderabad police’s particular investigation crew, which is coping with Mr Khan’s case, didn’t reply to the BBC’s request for remark.

It was when he was arrested that Ms Bi lastly found that Mr Khan was a Christian from Pakistan. “I fought with the police, saying that he is from Punjab,” she mentioned. “Then they told me that there is a Punjab in Pakistan too, and he is from there.”

Ms Bi says she was initially shocked to listen to the reality however that she has now made peace with it. “How does it matter now?” she asks.

After Mr Khan’s arrest, she sought assist from villagers and picked up cash for his authorized bills. A neighborhood court docket granted him bail in 2020 and a case on whether or not he must be deported is being heard.

In February 2022, Mr Khan was arrested once more after the Telangana authorities issued an order to detain what they described as “illegal migrants” within the state.

The state’s excessive court docket then ordered that he be launched till his deportation case was determined.

Mr Khan does not deny the costs in opposition to him, acknowledging that he’s a Pakistani citizen who pretended to be an Indian. “I got what I deserved. I have no complaints,” he informed the BBC.

Now the couple is ready for the court docket’s verdict to search out out if they will keep collectively, both in India or Pakistan.

“I just hope it all works out,” Ms Bi says.

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