Seema Ghulam Haider lives in greater Noida with her lover, Sachin Meena, and her children (File)
A Pakistani woman, who sneaked into India with her four children to live with a Hindu man she had befriended through an online gaming platform, has been ostracised by her family and neighbours back home for daring to defy societal norms.
Seema Ghulam Haider and Sachin Meena met online in 2019 while playing PUBG. This culminated into a dramatic love story between the two who lived over 1,300 km apart in countries not friendly with each other.
Seema, 30, and Sachin, 22, live in Greater Noida, near Delhi, where Sachin runs a grocery store, according to the Uttar Pradesh Police.
While Seema was arrested on July 4 for illegally entering India without a visa via Nepal with her four children - all below seven years of age, Sachin was jailed for sheltering the illegal immigrants.
The woman's family and neighbours in Pakistan's Karachi are not impressed and don't want her to return.
"She should just send her children back to Pakistan. She can stay there. Now she is no longer a Muslim even," her landlord's 16-year-old son said. Seema had been living on rented with her children for the three years before deciding to come to India to be with her Hindu lover.
The story of this not so educated mother of four and the wife of a man working abroad abandoning everything and entering India illegally to be with a much younger lover has fascinated everyone in her neighbourhood in Bhittaiabad - a Katchi Abadi in the heart of Gulistan-e-Jauhar.
Her home is a three-room portion in a building devoid of any paint and located in a narrow lane filled with garbage and an overflowing sewage system.
The stench from the sewage lingers in the air in the crowded un-constructed lane and broken road bustling with people and shops on both sides.
Seema's house is testament that the reports about her husband - Ghulam Haider, who works in Saudi Arabia, buying her the house for Rs 1.2 million is absolutely untrue.
"No, she was a tenant with us for three years with her children. She lived alone with her children. Her father-in-law lives nearby," Nur Muhammad, the landlord's son, explained.
Seema and Ghulam Haider had eloped 10 years ago to Karachi and married against the wishes of their parents.
"We saw her call a taxi and leave one day with her children and some bags and we thought she was going to her village in Jacobabad. But after nearly a month, when we heard about her on TV channels, we were shocked," Jamal Jakhrani, an elderly man, who was her neighbour, said.
Mr Jakhrani, who belongs to the same tribe as Seema and Ghulam Haider, believes it is best she remains in India now.
"If she ever thinks of coming back, she will not be forgiven by the tribe and secondly, her decision to stay with a Hindu has angered everyone here," he said.
Mian Mithoo, a religious leader in Pakistan's rural Sindh, known for using his seminary to convert Hindu girls to Islam, has openly threatened to punish Seema if she returns home.
His supporters have also threatened to attack Hindu places of worship in Seema's village but a police officer in Kashmore-Kandhkot, Irfan Samoo, assured Hindus and Sikhs that they would be protected.
Mr Samoo, however, is puzzled by the whole case and has pointed out anomalies in Seema's documents and tale.
"Her national identity card says she was born in 2002. So, she should be 21 now and yet she has four children all aged at least six," he said.
He also said the police have asked Ghulam Haider to return from Saudi Arabia but he has been in touch with them only on video and phone calls.
Mr Samoo is not convinced that a woman with a rural background would have the courage to plan her way to India via Dubai and Kathmandu.
An officer at the police station in Karachi where Seema's father-in-law filed an FIR is also not convinced that it is as simple a case as it seems.
"The husband also keeps changing his stories to the police. First, he said he bought the house and now he says he paid one million rupees to Seema's family to settle a tribal decision when they first fled to Karachi," he said.
"One thing is clear - Seema was frustrated with her husband's absence and being forced to take care of her four children all by herself as she had no support, not even from her in-laws," he said.
Malik, a mobile shop owner, remembered how, after a year of Seema moving into the neighbourhood, she used to visit his shop to get her phone balance recharged frequently.
"She always wore a chaddar over her head and half of her face would be covered. She didn't talk much. So it surprised me when I learnt about her decision," Malik said.
Maulvi Samiuddin, a prayer leader at the neighbourhood mosque, was not willing to talk about the incident initially. Later, he said Seema was evil.
"Husbands should never leave their wives alone for years and parents need to constantly keep a watch on their daughters or we will have more such incidents in the future because most people, especially women, are not educated enough in such poor neighbourhoods to understand the consequences of their actions," he said.
"She has brought shame to Muslims and Pakistan. She will face punishment for her actions sooner or later," he said.
Meanwhile, a Hindu place of worship was attacked early Sunday by a gang of dacoits with rockets in the Kashmore area of the province.
The attack comes just days after dacoits in the Kashmore and Ghotki riverine areas had threatened to attack Hindu places of worship and the community members in retaliation over the case.
"The suspects fled from the scene after the attack. The police are searching the area," a police official said, adding that eight to nine gunmen were involved in the attack.
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) said it was alarmed by reports that these gangs have threatened to attack the community's sites of worship with high-grade weapons and asked the Sindh Home Department to investigate the matter without delay.