An Indian man who fell in love with a Pakistani girl has been accused by Indian authorities of passing state secrets to Pakistani intelligence officials and has been jailed for more than 11 years under India’s highly controversial Prevention of Terrorism Act (Pota).
Muhammad Javed, now 33, first met Mobina when he travelled to Karachi in 1999 with his mother for a family wedding. He and his cousin fell in love with each other during his three and a half months in the city.
“Within a month of our meeting, we expressed our love for each other,” Javed told the BBC.
“She would leave home in the morning telling her family that she was going to college. I would meet her outside the college gate, and we would go and hang out in Safari Park,” he said.
On his return to India, Javed would spend most of his television mechanic’s salary calling her from a phone booth, and the two wrote each other long love letters. His friends would translate their letters between Urdu and Hindi.
Javed went again to Karachi a year later to discuss with Mobina’s family which side of the border the couple would live, but returned to India without the matter being decided.
In August 2002, Javed and three friends were abducted and tortured for three days before being produced in court, and were accused of passing state secrets to Pakistani intelligence officials.
Dozens of young Muslim men have been jailed on similar trumped-up charges across India, according to a spokesman of the campaign group Rihai Manch, the BBC reports.
Javed’s father sold the family’s land and jewellery to fight his case, and his mother laments that if she hadn’t insisted on going to Karachi in the first place, her son might not have lost some of the best years of his life.
When asked by the BBC if he would like to see her again, Javed said, “I have managed to expel her from my head, but not from my heart.”
“I still love her, but I’m afraid to call her. What happens if they go after me or my family again?”
