By IANS,
Attari (Punjab) : The efforts of a Pakistan-based theatre personality and an India-based judicial officer, both women, brought a smile on the face of a teenaged Pakistani boy as he returned to his country after being in a juvenile home in Punjab for nearly a year.
Kashif Ali, 13, who ran away from his house in Pakistan’s Okara district last year, was nabbed by the Border Security Force (BSF) in Ferozepur as he crossed into the Indian territory. He was sent to the juvenile home in Faridkot, 200 km from Chandigarh.
Pakistan-based theatre personality Madeeha Gohar was at the Attari-Wagah joint check post between India and Pakistan Tuesday to receive the boy. On the Indian side, Archana Puri, a district and sessions judge at Faridkot, came to send him off along with a set of books.
A visibly happy Kashif told the media, as he alighted from a bus to cross the zero line to enter Pakistan, that he was happy to be going back.
“I had run away from home last year as my family was sending me to a madrassa (religious seminary) there. I did not want to go there. I crossed into India by mistake. I am happy to be going back home,” he said.
It was a visit by Gohar’s theatre group to Faridkot recently that she was told by judge Puri that a Pakistani boy was lodged in the juvenile home. Gohar went back to Pakistan and got his photographs published in newspapers. The boy’s family was traced.
Following efforts made in India and Pakistan, the government allowed Kashif’s release as a goodwill gesture.
“We have asked his mother not to send him to the madrassa again. That is the reason he ran away from home earlier,” Gohar told media.
She added that she planned to write and direct a play on Kashif’s story and would get him to act in it.
“I am happy that he is finally going back. We got his case expedited,” judge Puri said.