A young Pakistani girl, Rahila Vakil, who came to India to visit her father’s grave in Panipat, had to return on Thursday without fulfilling her wish. Rahila’s father was killed in the Samjhauta Express blasts in 2007 and was buried there. The girl was stopped for visiting her father’s grave in Panipat as her visa was only for her ancestral village in Uttar Pradesh.
According to Mr Momin Malik, an advocate based in Panipat, who is the lawyer for the kin of the victims, the month-long stay of the Pakistani girl came to an abrupt end when the police forced her to board a train to Pakistan without allowing her to visit her father’s grave at Mehrana village in Panipat.
He said that despite having been granted a visa to visit the country, Rahila has been denied permission to visit her father’s grave in Mehrana village of Panipat district.
Rahila had to spend four long years to find her father Mohammad Vakil, who lies buried in grave number 38 at Mehrana village.
Mohammad Vakil had boarded the fateful train on February 17 but reportedly went missing. Unmindful of the fact that her father could have been killed in the Samjhauta blasts, Rahila continued to believe that he had been arrested by the Indian security agencies and put behind bars. The Pakistani girl wrote many letters to the authorities of more than 60 Indian jails seeking information about her father, but finally she found that he had been killed in the blasts. After the NIA confirmed that Mohammad had boarded the Samjhauta Express on February 17, 2007 and that he was killed in the twin blasts, Rahila and her family applied for visa to visit his grave.