Rajasthan man sneaks in from Pak to meet kin, held
JAISALMER : Rajasthan’s Hasan Khan, 55, and his family have a riveting story. The problem is security agencies do not believe him and their accounts yet.
According to the Khan family of Siyalon Ki Basti village in Jaisalmer district, about 570 km west of state capital Jaipur, Hasan left home and walked over the unfenced border to Pakistan in 1990 to take care of his ailing brother-in-law.
By the time he wanted to return, a fence was up owing to concerns over porous borders. Hasan stayed put in Pakistan for 27 years.
He sneaked back to India in April this year. Police arrested him last week from a bus stand in Jaisalmer, the westernmost frontier of India and close to the Pakistan border, and are questioning him to find out if he is a Pakistani spy. His parents — father Peeru Khan, 90, and mother Batti, 80 — insist he is not.
“He came back to take care of us. Did he do anything wrong?” asks Batti. She is frail and a little hard of hearing, but her responses are clear.
Batti and Peeru were in their two-room house when HT visited Siyalon Ki Basti. Hasan’s wife and their two children were out, working in the fields.
So why did Hasan decide to return after 27 years? “Only God knows and he knows,” said Batti.
After questioning Hasan, police found Batti and one of his cousins went to Pakistan in 2014 and urged him to return as Peeru was not keeping well.
Rajeev Dutta, additional superintendent of police, CID (border intelligence), said Hasan paid a Pakistani Rs 5,000 to help him cross the border. “After entering India, Hasan Khan came to Siyalon Ki Basti and later visited Gujarat, Maharashtra and many other places. He was arrested on October 9,” Dutta told HT.