“She’s dead to us”, says the father of the Indian woman who married a Pak friend.
Anju, a married Indian woman who journeyed to Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and married a Facebook friend there on Tuesday, was as good as dead for her family back home, according to her father.
Gaya Prasad Thomas, her father, told reporters in Bouna village in Madhya Pradesh’s Gwalior district that she had damaged her two children’s future.
“The way she ran away leaving her two children and husband behind…. she did not even think of her children. If she wanted to do this, she should have divorced her husband first. She is no more (alive) for us,” he said.
Also read: “I’d rather die than return”: Pakistani girl who crossed border
When asked if she had converted to Islam, he said he had no information in this regard.
“What will happen to her children, her husband? Who will take care of her children – a 13-year-old girl and a five-year-old boy? She has ruined the future of her children and her husband. Who will take care of her kids…We will have to do it,” Thomas said.
Asked whether he will appeal to the Indian government to bring her back, Thomas said he would do no such thing.
“I pray…to let her die there,” he added.
Thomas also said that Anju was not on speaking terms with him, and spoke only to her mother.
“I don’t know how she got the passport when she got the visa,” he said.
When asked if there was anything more to the occurrence because his village is close to Tekanpur town, where a large unit of the Border Security Force (BSF) is stationed, Thomas fiercely denied the allegation.
“No one raised any such issue with us. Only you (media) are raising this question. My kids have no criminal tendencies. I am ready to have any probe in the matter,” he said.
Thomas characterized his daughter on Monday as “mentally disturbed and eccentric.” Anju married her Facebook buddy in Pakistan after converting to Islam, according to a story earlier in the day, and now goes by the name Fatima.
As an Indian woman married a Pak friend, the 34-year-old Indian woman was staying at the home of her 29-year-old Pakistani acquaintance Nasrullah in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Upper Dir area.
